The korfbal and the process of feminization of sports in Spain

Abstract

During the first third of the 20th century, and in the context of the institutionalization of physical education in Spain, practices and games were articulated around school sports. The pedagogical preference towards corporal games made possible the incorporation of some foreign sports games that were assimilated to favor the physical education of young girls. The aim of this article is to recover the first news of the sports games that we have called "ball and basket" and, in particular, korfbal, which became known during the Second Republic. Likewise, the aim is to make visible the people who had the greatest influence on this issue. Based on a methodology that relies on the heuristics of the historical press, the chronology of commented news offers an analysis in the pedagogical and social field of physical education and sport. It is concluded that sports games such as basket-ball, net-ball, cestobal, korfball or gingar-ball configured a list of underlying practices of non-violence, susceptible of favoring the physical education of young Spanish women in accordance with the stereotype of women desired by the dominant culture and, consequently, constituting a sporting process of feminization.