Abstract
Shooting sports with firearms is historically built as a “male world”. The reasons are mainly its proximity with military area and the fact that weapons are often linked to virility. Thus, women’s presence is viewed as very recent. Historical texts on Swiss shooting barely mention women. However, researchers must adopt a “suspicious” attitude and not directly believe what people say and write. Even though shooting sports is framed by manhood from its institutionalization from the 19th onward, can we assume that women neither practiced shooting nor led shooting organizations by then? In the archives, I found scattered traces of women’s presence. The women’s history in shooting sports tend to be porous as ‘blanks’ pervade the archives. Moreover, the very organization of the archives tends to ‘invisibilize’ women’s traces. Consequently, this chapter tackles the question of how do(es) the place(s) of women in the archives show us the making of a specific institutional sporting memory. I adopt a microlevel, feminist and spatial view on the archives. This chapter’s purpose is to reflect on the meaning of a sociological and historical gender-concerned knowledge of shooting sports in Switzerland.
Due to a strong link between sport and the military area in Switzerland, a big part of the Swiss Shooting Museum contains archives on sporting practice.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkin, Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
- 2.
This is the term used for every Swiss man who does his compulsory military school after reaching adulthood. After the military school (eighteen weeks since 2018), he has to do mandatory shooting every year until circa 30 years old.
- 3.
Colonel K. Fisch, “Le développement du tir en dehors du service depuis 1874,” Revue militaire suisse 10 (1915), 401–22.
- 4.
Peter Schmid and Philipp Zeller, 1824–1999: 175 ans Fédération suisse des tireurs (Langenthal: Schweizerischer Schützenverband, 1999): 37.
- 5.
Schmid and Zeller, 1824–1999, 52. In their book, the statistics begin from 1970s—with the sports reform in Switzerland—until 1998 and concern only licensed shooters. We can see a progressive increase in number of the members and societies in 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and a drastic drop at the beginning of 1990s. For the years before, there are no centralized statistics and annual reports in archives have members’ number according to competitions or shootings festivals, that mixed licensed and non-licensed shooters. Some participated in several competitions and can be counted several times.
- 6.
Schmid and Zeller, 1824–1999, 51.
- 7.
These numbers come from quantitative tables that the Federation sent to me but the recent archives now belong to a private society and is no free access. The Federation has to pay to produce statistics.
- 8.
I did a 3-year ethnography of shooting sports in Switzerland for my doctoral project in sociology (2014–2019). The title is: “Bodies, Weapons, Sports. Ethnography of the Shooters’ Processes of Subjectification of Gender in Two Sportive Practices in Switzerland: Archery and Firearms Shooting”. For this chapter, I focus on firearms shooting.
- 9.
See, for example, Fritz Pieth, Sport in der Schweiz (Olten: Walter, 1979); the Historic Dictionary of Switzerland entry, “Sport”, accessible at: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F16332.php.
- 10.
Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
- 11.
Regina Wecker, “Women’s History in Switzerland,” in Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Randall (eds.), Writing Women’s History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 355–67.
- 12.
See the brochure of the Federal Commission for women’s questions: “Girls Education and Diversity” (2009), accessible at: https://www.ekf.admin.ch/dam/…/4_1_education_desfillesetmixite14pages.pdf.
- 13.
This programme was opened to young men from 12 to 20 years old from 1919, depending on the districts. It is practised with assault rifles from the Swiss Army. Women have been accepted since 1973.
- 14.
Michelle Beyeler, “Effets directs et indirects du fédéralisme sur les politiques en matière d’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes – Perspectives venues de la Suisse,” Fédéralisme Régionalisme 14 (2014).
- 15.
Brigitte Studer, “‘L’État c’est l’homme’: politique, citoyenneté et genre dans le débat autour du suffrage féminin après 1945,” Revue suisse d’histoire 46 (1996): 356–82.
- 16.
According to a lithography in the Swiss Shooting Museum from Jakob Schwegler, accessible at: http://www.schuetzenmuseum.ch/?page_id=3896&lang=fr, accessed October 12, 2018.
- 17.
Tibor Szvircsev Tresch, “The Transformation of Switzerland’s Militia Armed Forces and the Role of the Citizen in Uniform,” Armed Forces & Society 37 (2011): 239–60.
- 18.
At the end of 2018 the Swiss Shooting Federation published new numbers on its website: 53,000 men and 7000 women (accessible at: https://www.swissshooting.ch/fr/verband/facts-figures/) that concern 2016. However, these numbers must be taken with caution because they do not reflect the “reality:” women’s integration depends on the disciplines and the weapons that are used. Moreover, the statistics about women are only available for 2016 because the Federation does not want to pay more to have these statistics every year and prefers to focus on age statistics and discipline statistics (according to my interview with the committee of the Federation).
- 19.
Anne-Marie Sohn, Une histoire sans les hommes est-elle possible? (Lyon: ENS Editions, 2014).
- 20.
Artemis March, “Female Invisibility in Androcentric Sociological Theory,” Critical Sociology 11 (1982): 99–107.
- 21.
Jacques revel, “Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social,” in Lynn Hunt and Jacques Revel (eds.), Histories: French Constructions of the Past—Postwar French Thought (New York: New Press, 1995), 502.
- 22.
Varda Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Michael Messner, It’s All for the Kids: Gender, Families and Youth Sports (Oakland: University of California Press, 2009).
- 23.
The aspect of fraternity appears many times in the archives. For example, in the annual report of SRMS of 1962: “A particular attention in the tournaments is given to the historical shootings. Historical shootings have the aim to develop the shooting art but also to cultivate patriotic spirit of shooters,” 15.
- 24.
Anne-Marie Devreux, “Des appelés, des armes et des femmes: l’apprentissage de la domination masculine à l’armée,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 18 (1997): 49–78; Pinar Senek, Devenir un homme en rampant, trans. Ali Terzioglu (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014).
- 25.
Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993).
- 26.
Anaïs Bohuon, “La pratique physique et sportive féminine à l’aube du XXe siècle: moyen technique de maintien d’une définition normative des corps… L’exemple de la menstruation,” Gesnerus 70 (2013): 111–26.
- 27.
Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sport (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
- 28.
William Tell is a folk hero from a Swiss legend in the fourteenth century. He was a great crossbow shooter. He incarnates the resistance against foreign tyranny.
- 29.
George Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
- 30.
We also find these aspects in Italy at the end of the nineteen century, as Gilles Pécout explained in his article: “Les sociétés de tir dans l’Italie unifiée de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 102 (1990): 533–676.
- 31.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Riflemen Society”, 1961, 15.
- 32.
For example Michelle Perrot on female factory workers. Michelle Perrot, Les ouvrières en grève, 1871–1890 (Paris: La Haye, 1972).
- 33.
Michelle Perrot, Les femmes ou les silences de l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1998).
- 34.
Martin Johnes, “Archives and Historians of Sport,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 32 (2015): 1784–98.
- 35.
Christophe Prochasson, “Les jeux du ‘je’: aperçus sur la subjectivité de l’historien,” Sociétés & Représentations 13 (2002): 207–26.
- 36.
To analyse this question further, see the recent scandal about the lack of diversity in history conferences: Claire Wang “History Conference Draws Fire for Featuring 30 White Men as Speakers,” The Stanford Daily (March 17, 2018), https://www.stanforddaily.com/2018/03/17/all-male-history-conference-stirs-controversy-over-lack-of-diversity/, Emma Kerr, “‘Multiple Steves and Pauls’: A History Panel Sets Off a Diversity Fierstorm,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (March 15, 2018), https://www.chronicle.com/article/Multiple-Steves-and/242841 or Mary Elizabeth Williams, “The ‘manel’ in Academia: Why Are No Women Historians Coming to a Big Event,” Salon (March 16, 2018), https://www.salon.com/2018/03/16/the-manel-in-academia-why-are-no-women-historians-coming-to-a-big-event/, accessed October 12, 2018.
- 37.
Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” in Sandra Harding (ed.), The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (London: Routledge, 1992), 437–70. To go further with standpoint feminist theory, see in particular Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins.
- 38.
Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 581.
- 39.
Harding, The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader.
- 40.
Donna Haraway, “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s,” Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65–108.
- 41.
See for example Philippe Carrard, “Une historienne et le ‘personnel’. Le Goût de l’archive d’Arlette Farge,” Sociétés & Représentations 13 (2002): 227–45.
- 42.
Janet Donohoe, Remembering Places: A Phenomenological Study of the Relationship Between Memory and Place (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 8.
- 43.
Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
- 44.
June Purvis, “Using Primary Sources When Researching Women’s History from a Feminist Perspective,” Women’s History Review 2 (1992): 273–306.
- 45.
Match shooting is a specific kind of shooting (at this epoch women shot with small calibre weapons) and the “matcheurs” organize the cantonal and inter-cantonal tournaments, and the qualifications for the Swiss championship and for the Olympic Games. At this epoch the SWMS was considered an equivalent of the SRMS.
- 46.
I spent two entire days in the Museum in December 2017 and January 2018.
- 47.
The original title is in German: “Div.Unterlagen Damenmatchschützen (1949–1998).”
- 48.
The others sources do not concern women’s participation. They seem to be about professional trainers, formation, outdoor and indoor materials.
- 49.
Accessible at: https://www.issf-sports.org/theissf/history.ashx, accessed October 10, 2018.
- 50.
We can be surprised that objects like medals are not on display in the Museum. However, many objects were given to the Museum and the curator explains me that there is not enough room in the Museum. These objects can be used for temporary expositions.
- 51.
Natalie Zemon-Davis, “Women and the World of the ‘Annales’,” History Workshop Journal 33 (1992): 121–37.
- 52.
Ex-Swiss Shooting Federation. It merged into the Swiss Shooting Federation in 2002 with other shooting societies. During the twentieth century, many different societies were founded that are specialized in using one kind of weapon.
- 53.
Only in the annual reports, the first names and names are indicated on the list of participants.
- 54.
“Annual report of the Swiss Riflemen Society”, 1968, 17.
- 55.
The “Glorious Thirties” is a term invented by Jean Fourastié in Les Trente Glorieuses, ou la révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975 (Paris: Fayard, 1979). This relates to the years when Europe saw important economic development following the Second World War.
- 56.
It is a privileged economic situation because they do not have to pay for ammunition.
- 57.
This report was accepted by the Swiss Government in 1975. For shooters, it is a proof that shooting is useful for the country and has to be practised in shooting societies and regional shooting associations and not only during military school (see Annual Report of the Swiss Riflemen Society, 1975, 18). “Annual Report of the Swiss Riflemen Society”, 1976, 5.
- 58.
See for examples Mary Jo Festle, Playing Nice, Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Christine Mennesson, Être une femme dans le monde des hommes: Socialisation sportive et construction du genre (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005); Jennifer Hargreaves and Eric Anderson, Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexuality (New York: Routledge, 2014).
- 59.
See articles in this book.
- 60.
Brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 5.
- 61.
Brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 12.
- 62.
There is no mention of her first name in the brochure, unlike his cousin.
- 63.
Brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 34.
- 64.
Brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 17.
- 65.
Interestingly, the original word in German is “Vaterland,” that we translate as “fatherland”.
- 66.
Brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 31.
- 67.
The field shooting is an annual shooting that was associated with the compulsory shootings that militaries must do every year. However, progressively, it become a sporting manifestation more open for sports shooters. Nowadays, it is considered as a competition.
- 68.
The newspaper is called Nebelspalter. See brochure “Women’s Shooting Club of Basel,” 1991, 35.
- 69.
Magglingen is the location of the National Sport Centre and Specialized School for Sport.
- 70.
E-periodica (www.e-periodica.ch.) is an online database for searching Swiss journals.
- 71.
The age is important to understand women’s trajectories in leadership positions. More often they are middle-aged than young. When a young women reaches a power position in politics or institutions, it can be for contextual reasons: on one hand, because a man is not available during that time and or on another hand, when groups need people who must mediate. Mediation is a stereotypically associated to women. For a further analysis, see Lucie Bargel, “La socialisation politique sexuée: apprentissage des pratiques politiques et normes de genre chez les jeunes militant·e·s,” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 24 (2005): 36–49.
- 72.
“Annual Report of Swiss Riflemen Society,” 1965, 16.
- 73.
Delphine Dulong et Frédérique Matonti, “Comment devenir un(e) professionnel(le) de la politique ? L’apprentissage des rôles au Conseil régional d’Île-de-France,” Sociétés & Représentations 24 (2007): 251–67.
- 74.
The SFPR and the SRMS have merged in 1988.
- 75.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Riflemen Society,” 1978, 45.
- 76.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Women Match Shooting Association,” 1978, 2.
- 77.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Women Match Shooting Association,” 1980, 3.
- 78.
Regina Wecker, “Women’s History in Switzerland.”
- 79.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Women Match Shooting Association,” 1979, 3.
- 80.
“Annual Report of the Swiss Women Match Shooting Association,” 1980, 2.
- 81.
The time to obtain a leadership positions in a gendered-mixed association/institution seems to be longer. The first women at the head of the Swiss Shooting Federation comes in… 2006.
- 82.
Gregory Quin, “History of Swiss Feminine Gymnastics Between Competition and Feminization (1950–1990),” Sport in Society 19 (2015): 653–66.
- 83.
Alfred Wyser, “Felchlin, Maria,” Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, accessible at: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F28661.php, accessed October 10, 2018.
- 84.
Linda Cardinal and Lucie Hotte. La parole mémorielle des femmes (Montréal: Editions du Remue-Ménage, 2002).
Bibliography
Bargel, Lucie. “La socialisation politique sexuée: apprentissage des pratiques politiques et normes de genre chez les jeunes militantes.” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 24 (2005): 36–49.
Baycroft, Timothy, and David Hopkin. Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Bernault, Florence. “Writing the History of Africa After 1960. Suitcases and the Poetics of Oddities: Writing History from Disorderly Archives.” History in Africa 42 (2015): 269–77.
Beyeler, Michelle. “Effets directs et indirects du fédéralisme sur les politiques en matière d’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes – Perspectives venues de la Suisse.” Fédéralisme Régionalisme 14 (2014). https://popups.uliege.be:443/1374-3864/index.php?id=1364.
Bohuon, Anaïs. “La pratique physique et sportive féminine à l’aube du XXe siècle: moyen technique de maintien d’une définition normative des corps… L’exemple de la menstruation.” Gesnerus 70 (2013): 111–26.
Burstyn, Varda. The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Cardinal, Linda, and Lucie Hotte. La parole mémorielle des femmes. Montréal: Editions du Remue-Ménage, 2002.
Devreux, Anne-Marie. “Des appelés, des armes et des femmes: l’apprentissage de la domination masculine à l’armée.” Nouvelles Questions Féministes 18 (1997): 49–78.
Dulong, Delphine, and Frédérique Matonti, “Comment devenir un(e) professionnel(le) de la politique? L’apprentissage des rôles au Conseil régional d’Île-de-France.” Sociétés & Représentations 24 (2007): 251–67.
Festle, Mary Jo. Playing Nice, Politics and Apologies in Women’s Sports. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Fisch, Colonel K. “Le développement du tir en dehors du service depuis 1874.” Revue militaire suisse 10 (1915): 401–22.
Ginzburg, Carlo. Clues, Myths and the Historical Method. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Guttman, Allen. From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
Haraway, Donna. “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s.” Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65–108.
Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (1988), 575–99.
Harding, Sandra. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” In Sandra Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, 437–40. London: Routledge, 1992.
Hargreaves, Jennifer. Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sport. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Hargreaves, Jennifer, and Eric Anderson. Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Johnes, Martin. “Archives and Historians of Sport.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 32 (2015): 1784–98.
March, Artemis. “Female Invisibility in Androcentric Sociological Theory.” Critical Sociology 11 (1982): 99–107.
Mennesson, Christine. Être une femme dans le monde des hommes: Socialisation sportive et construction du genre. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005.
Messner, Michael. It’s All for the Kids: Gender, Families and Youth Sports. Oakland: University of California Press, 2009.
Mosse, George. The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Pécout, Gilles. “Les sociétés de tir dans l’Italie unifiée de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle.” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 102 (1990): 533–676.
Perrot, Michelle. Les ouvriers en grève, 1871–1890. Paris: La Haye, 1972.
Perrot, Michelle. Les femmes ou les silences de l’histoire. Paris: Flammarion, 1998.
Pieth, Fritz. Sport in der Schweiz. Olten: Walter, 1979.
Prochasson, Christophe. “Les jeux du ‘je’: aperçus sur la subjectivité de l’historien.” Sociétés & Représentations 13 (2002): 207–26.
Quin, Gregory. “History of Swiss Feminine Gymnastics Between Competition and Feminization (1950–1990).” Sport in Society 19 (2015): 653–66.
Revel, Jacques. “Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social.” In Lynn Hunt and Jacques Revel, eds., Histories: French Constructions of the Past. Postwar French Thought, 492–502. New York: New Press, 1995.
Schmid, Peter, and Philippe Zeller. 1824–1999: 175 ans Fédération suisse des tireurs. Langenthal: Schweizerischer Schützenverband, 1999.
Senek, Pinar. Devenir un homme en rampant. Translated by Ali Terzioglu. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014.
Sohn, Anne-Marie. Une histoire sans les hommes est-elle possible? Lyon: ENS Editions, 2014.
Stoler, Ann. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Studer, Brigitte. “‘L’État c’est l’homme’: politique, citoyenneté et genre dans le débat autour du suffrage féminin après 1945.” Revue suisse d’histoire 46 (1996): 356–82.
Szvircsev Tresch, Tibor. “The Transformation of Switzerland’s Militia Armed Forces and the Role of the Citizen in Uniform.” Armed Forces & Society 37 (2011): 239–60.
Thorne, Barrie. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
Wecker, Regina. “Women’s History in Switzerland.” In Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson and Jane Rendall, eds., Writing Women’s History, 355–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Zemon-Davis, Natalie. “Women and the World of the ‘Annales’.” History Workshop Journal 33 (1992): 121–37.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Froidevaux, S. (2019). Having a Place of One’s Own: Doing a Feminist Ethnography of the Swiss Shooting Museum’s Archives. In: Cervin, G., Nicolas, C. (eds) Histories of Women's Work in Global Sport. Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26909-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26909-8_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26908-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26909-8
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)