Negotiating Modern Womanhood: Missionary Physical Education and Women’s Sport in Early Twentieth-Century China

Women’s physical education and sport in early twentieth-century China developed through missionary educational institutions and the YWCA. Moving beyond diffusionist interpretations that portray missionary sport as either cultural imperialism or a precursor to nationalist emancipation, these initiatives were negotiated as part of a transnational process in which bodily discipline, moral reform, and civic identity. Archival materials from Ginling College, the YWCA, and contemporary publications show how Christian physical training reshaped women’s bodily practices and public roles while being reinterpreted within Chinese debates on womanhood, national strength, and modern citizenship. By the 1920s and 1930s, Christian moral reform was increasingly rearticulated through nationalist and secular educational discourse, even as the organizational and disciplinary structures of women’s physical education persisted. The emergence of modern women’s sport in China thus resulted from reinterpretation and institutional transformation within a transnational context.