ABSTRACT
This historical case study demonstrates that the purpose of a program of strength training affects whether it will empower women. The Turnverein or Turners was a German American organization that combined physical training, ethnic pride, and civic engagement. From the 1880s to the 1920s, it was at the forefront of promoting women’s exercise in the United States, including strength training with weighted clubs, dumbbells, and apparatuses. Woman Turners seized on physical training to challenge patriarchal power structures. They found joy in exertion, achievement, and comradery, while contesting the notion that to be feminine meant to be weak. Yet male Turners saw women’s strength primarily as an aid for reproducing a healthy race – the German Volk in Europe and the German ethnicity (as part of the white race) in North America. Strong women would be effective wives and raise strong children. The Turners were hardly outliers at a time when eugenics enjoyed wide popularity, but the ideology of this mainstream organization not only excluded many women but also constrained the potential of strength sports to empower women who participated.
