Beyond Controlled Bodies: Gendered Legacies and the Future of Physical Education in Latin America

Abstract

This article presents a critical reflection on the persistence of gender legacies that continue to structure physical education in Latin America, highlighting how many forms of discrimination have found refuge in contemporary discourse on market efficiency. In a post-feminist moment, where neoliberalism has managed to commodify and instrumentalize the language of female empowerment, old hierarchies reappear under the seemingly neutral lexicon of optimization, performance, and individual responsibility. Thus, equality becomes a manageable slogan and exclusion is normalized as a “natural” result of competitiveness. From my current position in Türkiye, where similar tensions between modernization, conservatism, and moral control are emerging, I analyze how this neoliberal lexicon allows discourses of inclusion to mask deeply rooted logics of bodily discipline. Although institutions talk about well-being and innovation, practices continue to classify bodies according to productivist parameters that disproportionately affect women. Secondarily, I draw on observations from my fieldwork in Brazil and Colombia (2018–2019) to show how these dynamics manifest themselves in the field of sports. The article proposes a post-neoliberal and feminist vision of physical education that conceives of the body as a space for creativity, relationship, and social justice.