Women and Parachuting

Marked by a military history, parachuting - as a sport - mobilised some traditional values of manliness, such as bravery and fearlessness, technical control and physical involvement. However, in the France of the 1950s, some sportswomen attempted to penetrate the parachuting world and to challenge this male bastion. Michèle Savary and Colette Duval were among these women. Moreover, these sportswomen recorded their experiences in autobiographies and prose memoirs. Relying on the methodological reflections of gender/women's studies and using a literary approach, this article reveals the gendered resistances that Savary and Duval had to overcome. Vexations, discriminations and stigmatisations concerning female parachutists were numerous. This paper will focus on the strategies adopted by these two sportswomen in order to 'exist' in a male world. By analysing their stories, it will offer a new and original approach to the history of women's sport. Bandy for her assistance in the final stage of editing this essay. This paper has been written with the support of the National Research Agency, programme PRAS-GEVU. Notes 1. Laget and Mazot, Le Grand livre du sport féminin; Arnaud and Terret, Histoire du sport féminin; Terret et al., Sport et genre. 2. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 13-14. Quotations translated by the author. 3. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 14. 4. Bourdès, Histoire du parachutisme en France. The first World Championship occurred in 1951. The French school attracted attention because Pierre Lard and Monique Laroche, two French parachutists, won the contest. 5. Drevon, Alice Milliat; Munoz, 'Marie-Thérèse Eyquem'; Bloit, Micheline Ostermeyer; Erard, 'Micheline Ostermeyer'. 6. McElroy, 'Athletes Displaying Their Lives', 165-79. 7. Bale et al., Writing Lives in Sport. 8. Cf. According to Birgitte Possing, we would like to remind the postmodern and post-structuralist critics 'as Derrida, Foucault and Barthes, who have called the historical biography "impossible to use as a reference", "spurious", "a feature of the exercise of power", "profit-mongering in intimacy"'. Bourdieu used the expression 'biographical illusion'. Bourdieu, 'L'illusion biographique'; Possing, 'The Historical Biography', 22. 9. Bandy, 'The Female Athlete as Protagonist', 94. 10. Bale et al., Writing Lives in Sport, 9; Miraux, L'Autobiographie; Lejeune, Je est un autre; Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique. 11. Michèle Savary defined the 'automatic opening': 'a girth is hung from a cable in the aircraft and from the top of the parachute. During the free fall, this girth unrolls itself and finally pulls up the parachute bag. It permits the opening of the parachute' (Race de la rigueur, 13). 12. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 80-1. 13. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 140. 14. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 170. The end of the novel developed the same motif: 'If she has to be parachuted as doctor, on day, she will be ready' (L'Escadrille blanche, 181). 15. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 16, 92. The author defined the manual opening: 'These parachutists hadn't got any girth hung and wound behind them. They were attached to nothing, but they had a red handle, and after the sky dive, they pull on it to set off the opening. It was more difficult than the automatic opening.' 16. Charreton, Le Sport, l'ascèse, le plaisir, 99; Savary, La Serbie aux outrages, 143. 17. Bandy, 'The Female Voice in American Sports Literature', 99. 18. Cf. Sauvy, 'La littérature et les femmes', 269-81; David-Néel, Voyage d'une parisienne à Lhassa; Maillart, Parmi la jeunesse russe; Maillart, Des monts célestes aux sables rouges. It is interesting to note that Ella Maillart was a traveller, a sailor but also an actress and a sportswoman. She established the first women's hockey team in French-speaking Switzerland, the Champel Hockey Club (1919). She participated in the Paris Olympic Games (1924) in sailing contests. From 1931 until 1934, she participated in the Skiing World Championship. 19. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 9. The 'civil incapacity' for married women was abolished in 1938. But until 1965, in France, married women could not have any bank account without marital authorisation. 20. Ibid., 110. 21. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 27. 22. Ibid., 41; Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 231, 138. 23. Ibid., 19. 24. Ibid., 20. 25. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 41. 26. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 11, 19; Duval, S'en fout la mort, 47. 27. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 135. 28. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 166. 29. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 10-11. 30. Ibid., 16, 27. The first chapter of Duval's Ma vie de risque-tout is entitled 'The silences of Sam'. 31. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 148, 154; Savary, Race de la rigueur, 19. 32. Ibid., 242. 33. Ibid., 20, 62. 34. Ibid., 73, 249. 35. Sohn, Sois un homme!, 61, 64. 'Sound landscape' is our translation of the expression used by Alain Corbin, 'paysage sonore': Corbin, Les Cloches de la terre. 36. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 111. 37. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 28. Conversely, this kind of song offended Savary (Race de la rigueur, 36). Moreover, in her last autobiography, S'en fout la mort!, Duval used a language less refined and sometimes colloquial and vulgar. The evolution of the linguistic register seems to be in accordance with her integration in the parachutists' world. 38. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 15, 20. 39. Ibid., 10, 79. 40. Ibid., 60. 41. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 249 42. Ibid., 59. 43. Ibid., 224, 86. 44. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 140. 45. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 37. 46. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 211. 47. Duval, S'en fout la mort, 28. 48. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 144, 202, 89. 49. Ibid., 75. 50. Cf. Butler, Gender Trouble. 51. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 86-7. 52. Ibid., 127. 53. Sontag, 'A Woman's Beauty', 359-61. Darden, 'Outsiders', 7. 54. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 128, 92. 55. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 47. 56. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 183, 127-8. She added: 'Now I have to care about my equipment, but also about my clothes, about my make-up and my look' (Ibid., 160). 57. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 170. The excessive media coverage of her love story with the stuntman Delamare seems to focus on the same goal: feminising and sexualising the sportswoman. 58. Ibid., 171. 59. Savary, L'Escadrille blanche, 101. 60. Ibid., 13. 61. Duval, S'en fout la mort!, 41-42

Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · Outdoor and Experiential Education · Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management

• The Early Development of Women's Judo in Belgium from the Liberation to the late 1950s

  Haimo Groenen•The International Journal of the…•2012

  Add to list

• Le pacte autobiographique

  Philippe Lejeune•Le pacte autobiographique•1996

  Add to list

• Sois un homme! - La construction de la masculinité au XIXe siècle

  Anne-Marie Sohn•"Sois un homme!"•2019

  Add to list

• Gender Trouble

  Judith Butler•Gender Trouble•2011

  Add to list

• L'illusion biographique

  Pierre Bourdieu•Actes de la recherche en sciences…•1986

  Add to list