ABSTRACT
The following study does not claim to present new archival research on physical education for women. Rather, it is an attempt to reconsider aspects of our present knowledge and to offer a sociological account of the surveillance and control of women's bodies. It is argued that the measurement and monitoring of health and physique were incorporated into a powerful armamentarium of physical and social regulation. The weapons were double-edged. Physical education and measurement were powerful elements in the feminist reformers’ struggle for academic education for women. They also added to the strictures of conformity and control within which women educators in Britain and the United States were forced to manoeuvre. The ‘feminist physique’ was both symbolic and instrumental in the contested domain of women's physical and intellectual well-being. The major sources drawn on for this contribution are the histories of women's educational institutions, the autobiographies and biographies of the reformers, and the growing number of secondary sources in this important area of feminist history. 1
