The Interwar Years: Progress and Backlash

The 1920s and 1930s saw increased female participation in cycling, though not in the Tour itself. Women's racing flourished at local and national levels. Champions like Alfonsina Strada in Italy and Amélie Le Gall in France demonstrated that women could race professionally, attracting substantial crowds and media coverage. Yet the Tour remained forbidden territory.

Economic Arguments

Tour organizers deployed economic arguments against women's inclusion. They claimed separate women's race would double costs while generating minimal revenue. Women's sports, they argued, lacked commercial appeal. This circular logic—excluding women because they lacked audience while preventing them from building audience through exclusion—would persist for decades.

The real reasons ran deeper than economics. The Tour had become symbol of masculine virtue—strength, endurance, suffering nobly borne. Allowing women to demonstrate these same qualities threatened carefully constructed gender hierarchies. If women could climb the Tourmalet and survive Alpine stages, what other male preserves might they claim?