Abstract des Autors

In Finnish sports and gymnastics movement, the division of organization according to gender has been completed further than anywhere else.The ruling organizations, basing teir activities mainly on competitive sports, are dominated by men. Women are entrenched in the powerful organizations of their own, the women's gymnastics unions, where competition is banned (working class sports as an exception). The above described division of labour was crystallized in the 1920s and 30s, when women's competitive sports and women's entrance in the olympic movement encoutered strong opposition in Finland both in organizations led by men and by women. It is worth noting that aggression and militarism were at the same time increasingly attached to the image of man, and this was done by the means of sports.This paper is a study of how manhood and womanhood were defined in the sports and gymnastics movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and how the different sports were seen appropriate for the two genders on the basis of these defintions. Newspapers and sports journals along with organizational documents and published statements of the movement's leaders have provided material for empirical study. Verf.-Referat