Muscles for motherhood: a genealogical analysis of medicalized ways of knowing female footballers in New Zealand, 1921 and 1973-1975

Michel Foucault argued that females gradually became integrated into the sphere of medical practices through a process which he termed as a hysterization of womens bodies (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978, 104). In this article, we draw on Foucault to examine how womens bodies, exercise and motherhood impacted on the historical development of female football in New Zealand within two time periods (1921 and 1973-1975). Employing his genealogical framework, we analyze newspaper reports, historical documents and conducted in-depth interviews to demonstrate how medical/scientific discourses both constrained and enabled the participation of women in football. We conclude that while medical knowledge was used to publicly disqualify the legitimacy of the female footballer in 1921, and hence her abrupt disappearance from the sporting realm, the absence of such medical knowledge in the early 1970s, combined with societal changes associated with second wave feminism, paved the way for the eventual normalization of female football in New Zealand.