Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Uluslararası Toplumsal Cinsiyet ve Spor Sempozyumu, Ankara, Türkiye, 4 - 05 Eylül 2014, ss.97
The aim of this study was to evaluate presentation formats of acquisitions and role models through the media
which provided by the early republic staff whom strived to make women modernized and more visible in
public area through sport as a success and beneficial tool. Literature search method which is evaluated as one
of the qualitative research methods is used in research, inversion process of traditional women to modern
one, regulations which prepare the ground for women’s participation in sports and reviews of sport women
who have reached to high performance have been interpreted by following through era media. There was no
remarkable change achieved in women’s position which traditional social structure gave them a passive role in
the constitutional period. A rapid progress has been achieved in limited environment at the beginning though
radical steps of republic in supportive fields which aimed to gain a modern life style for women. Showing up
of Turkish women yet in 1936 Berlin Olympics which can be counted as a short time for social changes, is the
most concrete view of this in the sports field. The size of the modernization effort progress in Turkey cannot be
denied. If the negative legacy left to world’s women considered about women’s participation to the games by
founder willpower of modern Olympic Games with the obsession of “ancient age” sample. Access of women to
public area and equal education rights was primarily guaranteed by legal regulations in early republican period.
Modernizing instruments should not conflict with women’s functions which is being “wife and mother” ascribed
as a public role in the culture? Sport was seen as the most effective instrument in this context. Healthy, strong
community could be created by the children of women who have gained health and power through physical
education. Indeed, especially in a short time, women from high socio-economic situated families’ daughters,
sister of athletes began to appearing in sports area. Thus presentation of the sport women performances
supported with plenty of visual materials and incentive interviews with sport women about modern life styles
started to taking place more and more in media from the beginning of 1930s. Sport ‘s effects on health, beauty
and especially aesthetic emphasized and women’s attention intensified to sport who doesn’t fit to presented
“new women” model with their physical mode. Bodies of beauty queens were shaping with body exercise,
effects of sports on weight loss were showing. Policies which attracts large numbers of women to sport seems
to caught most conducive environment with participation of two female athletes to the Olympic Games yet
in 1936. As a result, the traditional gender role of women were tried to be inverted to modern expectations
through sports and athletes during the early republic period; sport were tried to be one of the indispensables
of modern lifestyle with national, social, sanitary and aesthetic reasons.