Sports organiser · Equality pioneer
Alice Milliat
An organiser whose international women’s sports movement accelerated the inclusion of women’s events in global competition.
Life and work
The story behind the role.
Milliat was a rower and administrator who challenged the limited opportunities available to women in early twentieth-century sport. She helped build French women’s sporting structures and then organised internationally.
In 1921 she founded the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale. Its women’s world games demonstrated the demand and competitive standard that existing institutions had failed to recognise.