In her essay, Iris Marion Young seeks to describe the lived experience of women by articulating a phenomenological approach and social critique. Lancer comme une fille draws on the results of several empirical surveys conducted among young girls and boys in the 1970s to achieve this. One of these revealed that five-year-old girls, when asked to throw a ball, tended to use their bodies differently: unlike boys, who spontaneously used their whole bodies and were fully committed to the movement, girls were generally more hesitant and less mobile, using only the strength of their arms. On the basis of these results, Young puts forward the idea that this contradictory bodily experience has its origins in the fact that women experience their bodies not primarily as a power to act, but as an object under the male gaze, in a world where activities are defined from the male point of view.

Iris Marion Young (1949-2006) is a North American political science professor, philosopher and feminist. She taught at the University of Chicago and is a leading figure in the Center for Gender Studies.