French female youth and sports inspectors and the challenge of neoliberalism during the Trente Glorieuses

Abstract

In a society where the politics of life is geared toward maximizing the physical and psychological dimensions of human capital to ensure economic growth, France’s Inspectorate for Youth and Sports played a key role in disseminating a new mode of governance of bodies and youth—a form of self-governance based on the rising neoliberal values that emerged during the period of the Trente Glorieuses. Representing a tiny minority in an essentially male bastion, a small number of women, cherry-picked for their expertise and effectiveness as inspectors, came to play a vital role in a new mode of youth governance aimed, against a backdrop of social control, at encouraging young people to assume greater self-responsibility and to take ownership of their physical education and activities. Guided by research in the human and social sciences as a basis for rethinking how physical education is taught in schools, women may be seen as key contributors to the emergence of a new ethos designed to develop the ability of French youth to adapt to the social and economic transformation of capitalist society by appealing to the psyche (superego) and self-regulation. Despite promoting a “differentialist feminism”.