Feminism in France
Encyclopedia
Feminism in France has its origins in the French Revolution
. A few famous figures emerged during the 1871 Paris Commune
, including Louise Michel
, Russian-born Elisabeth Dmitrieff
, Nathalie Lemel
, and Renée Vivien
(born in 1877).
but not discussed. Although various feminist movements emerged during the Revolution, most politicians followed Rousseau's theories as outlined in Emile
, which confined women to the roles of mother and spouse. The philosopher Condorcet was a notable exception who advocated equal rights for both sexes.
The Société fraternelle de l'un et l'autre sexe (Fraternal Society of the Sexes) was founded in 1790 by Claude Dansart. It included prominent individuals such as Etta Palm d'Aelders
, Jacques Hébert
, Louise-Félicité de Kéralio
, Pauline Léon
, Théroigne de Méricourt, Madame Roland
, Talien and Merlin de Thionville. The following year, Olympe de Gouges
published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
. This was a letter addressed to Queen Marie Antoinette
which requested actions in favour of women's rights
. Gouges was guillotine
d two years later, days after the execution of the Girondins.
In February 1793, Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe
created the exclusively-female Société des républicaines révolutionnaires (Society of Revolutionary Republicans — the final "e" in "républicaines " explicitly denoting Republican Women), which boasted two hundred members. Viewed by the historian Daniel Guérin
as a sort of "feminist section of the Enragés
", they participated in the fall of the Girondins. Lacombe advocated giving weapons to women. However, the Society was outlawed by the revolutionary government in the following year.
generation, in particular among Paris
ian Saint Simonians
. Women freely adopted new lifestyles, inciting indignation in public opinion
. They claimed equality of rights and participated in the abundant literary activity
, such as Claire Démar's Appel au peuple sur l'affranchissement de la femme (1833), a feminist pamphlet
. On the other hand, Charles Fourier
's Utopian Socialist theory of passions advocated "free love
." His architectural model of the phalanstery community explicitly took into account women's emancipation.
The Bourbon Restoration
re-established the prohibition of divorce
in 1816. When the July Monarchy
restricted the political rights of the majority of the population, the feminist struggle rejoined the Republican and Socialist struggle for a "Democratic and Social Republic," leading to the 1848 Revolution and the proclamation of the Second Republic.
The 1848 Revolution became the occasion of a public expression of the feminist movement, who organized itself in various associations. Women's political activities led several of them to be proscribed as the other Forty-Eighters
.
, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff
, a young Russian exile and member of the Russian section of the First International (IWA), created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and Care of the Injured") on 11 April 1871. The feminist writer André Léo, a friend of Paule Minck, was also active in the Women's Union. The association demanded gender equality
, wage equality, right of divorce
for women, and right to secular
and professional education for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubines, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution
in closing the maisons de tolérance, or legal official brothel
s.
The Women's Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops. Along with Eugène Varlin
, Nathalie Le Mel created the cooperative
restaurant La Marmite, which served free food for indigents, and then fought during the Bloody Week on the barricades On the other hand, Paule Minck opened a free school in the Church of Saint Pierre de Montmartre
, and animated the Club Saint-Sulpice on the Left Bank. The Russian Anne Jaclard
, who declined to marry Dostoievsky and finally became the wife of Blanquist activist Victor Jaclard
, founded with André Léo the newspaper La Sociale. She was also a member of the Comité de vigilance de Montmartre
, along with Louise Michel and Paule Minck, as well as of the Russian section of the First International. Victorine Brocher, close to the IWA activists and founder of a cooperative bakery in 1867, also fought during the Commune and the Bloody Week.
Famous figures such as Louise Michel
, the "Red Virgin of Montmartre" who joined the National Guard
and would later be sent to New Caledonia
, symbolize the active participation of a small number of women in the insurrectionary events. A female battalion from the National Guard defended the Place Blanche
during the repression.
Despite some cultural changes following World War I
, which had resulted in women replacing the male workers who had gone to the front, they were known as the Années folles and their exuberance was restricted to a very small group of female elites. Victor Margueritte
's La Garçonne (The Flapper, 1922), depicting an emancipated woman, was seen as scandalous and caused him to lose his Légion d'honneur
. During the Third Republic, the suffragettes movement championed the right to vote for women, but did not insist on the access of women to legislative and executive offices. The suffragettes, however, did honour the achievements of foreign women in power by bringing attention to legislation passed under their influence concerning alcohol (such as Prohibition
in the United States), regulation of prostitution
, and protection of children's rights
. Despite this campaign and the new role of women following World War I, the Third Republic declined to grant them voting rights, mainly because of fear of the influence of clericalism
among them, echoing the conservative vote of rural areas for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
during the Second Republic
.
A few women acceded to political responsibilities in the 1930s, although they kept a low profile. In 1936, the new Prime Minister, Léon Blum
, included three women in the Popular Front
government: Cécile Brunschvicg
, Suzanne Lacore
and Irène Joliot-Curie
. Although Blum's feminism has been subject to debate, he had defended voting rights for women, a proposition included in the program of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party since 1906. However, he did not implement this measure because of the opposition of the Radical-Socialist Party. The inclusion of women in the Popular Front government was unanimously appreciated: even the far-right candidate Xavier Vallat
addressed his "congratulations" to Blum for this measure while the conservative newspaper Le Temps
wrote, on 1 June 1936, that women could be ministers without previous authorizations from their husbands. Cécile Brunschvicg and Irène Joliot-Curie were both legally "under-age" as women. At the end of the 1930s, the right-wing did not oppose women's right to vote anymore, partially because the female vote could be turned to their advantage.
(GPRF)'s ordinance
of 21 April 1944. The Consultative Assembly of Algiers of 1944 proposed on 24 March 1944 to grant eligibility to women. Following an amendment by the communist
deputy Fernand Grenier
, they were given full citizenship, including the right to vote. Grenier's proposition was adopted 51 to 16. In May 1947, following the November 1946 elections
, the sociologist Robert Verdier minimized the "gender gap
," stating in Le Populaire that women had not voted in a consistent way, dividing themselves, as men, according to social classes. Despite these progresses, and the inclusion in the 1946 Constitution
of the "equality of rights" between women and men, inequalities persist until today. During the baby boom
period, feminism again became a minor movement, despite forerunners such as Simone de Beauvoir
, who published The Second Sex
in 1949. Wars (both World War I and World War II) had seen the provisional emancipation of some, individual, women, but post-war periods signalled the return to conservative roles. For instance, Lucie Aubrac
, who was active in the French Resistance
— a role highlighted by Gaullist myths — returned to private life after the war. Thirty-three women were elected at the Liberation, but none entered the government, and the euphoria of the Liberation was quickly halted.
Women retained a low profile during the Fourth
and Fifth Republic
. In 1949, Jeanne-Paule Sicard was the first female chief of staff, but was called "Mr. Pleven
's (then Minister of Defence
) secretary." Marie-France Garaud, who entered Jean Foyer
's office at the Ministry of Cooperation and would later become President Georges Pompidou's
main counsellor, along with Pierre Juillet, was given the same title. The leftist newspaper Libération
, founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre
, would depict Marie-France Garaud as yet another figure of female spin-doctors. However, the new role granted to the President of the Republic in the semi-presidential regime of the Fifth Republic after the 1962 referendum on the election of the President at direct universal suffrage
, led to a greater role of the "First Lady of France". Although Charles de Gaulle
's wife Yvonne remained out of the public sphere, the image of Claude Pompidou
would interest the media more and more. The media frenzy surrounding Cécilia Sarkozy
, former wife of the current President Nicolas Sarkozy
, would mark the culmination of this current.
, only four included women, and never more than one at a time. SFIO member Andrée Viénot, widow of a Resistant, was nominated in June 1946 by the Christian democrat Georges Bidault
of the Popular Republican Movement
as Under-State Secretary to Youth and Sports. However, she remained in office for only seven months. The next woman to accede to governmental responsibilities, Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
, was minister of Health and Education from 24 November 1947 to 19 July 1948 in Robert Schuman
's cabinet. Remaining one year in office, her name remained attached to a decree
financing private education
. Published in the Journal officiel on 22 May 1948 with her signature, the decree had been drafted in her absence at the Council of Ministers of France. The Communist and the Radical-Socialist Party called for the repealing of the decree, and finally, Schuman's cabinet was overturned after failing a confidence motion on the subject. Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
did not pursue her political career, encouraged to abandon it by Pope Pius XII
.
The third woman to accede to governmental responsibilities would be the Radical-Socialist Jacqueline Thome-Patenôtre, nominated Under-State Secretary to Reconstruction and Lodging in Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury
's cabinet in 1957. Nafissa Sid Cara then participated to the government as State Secretary in charge of Algeria
from 1959 till the end of the war in 1962
. Marie-Madeleine Dienesch, who evolved from Christian-Democracy to Gaullism (in 1966), occupied various offices as State Secretary between 1968 and 1974. Finally, Suzanne Ploux was State Secretary for the Minister of National Education in 1973 and 1974. In total, only seven women acceded to governmental offices between 1946 and 1974, and only one as minister. Historians explain this rarity by underlining the specific context of the Trente Glorieuses
(Thirty Glorious Years) and of the baby boom, leading to a strengthening of familialism
and patriarchy
.
Even left-wing cabinets abstained from nominating women: Pierre Mendès-France
(advised by Colette Baudry) did not include any woman in his cabinet, neither did Guy Mollet
, the secretary general of the SFIO, nor the centrist Antoine Pinay
. Although the École nationale d'administration
(ENA) elite administrative school (from which a lot of French politicians graduate) became gender-mixed in 1945, only 18 women graduated from it between 1946 and 1956 (compared to 706 men).
Of the first eleven cabinets of the Fifth Republic
, four did not count any women. In May 1968, the cabinet was exclusively male. This low representation of women was not, however, specific to France: West Germany
's government did not include any women in any office from 1949 to 1961, and in 1974-1975, only 12 countries in the world had female ministers. The British government had exclusively male ministers.
, Monique Wittig
and Josiane Chanel in 1968. The name itself was given by the press, in reference to the US Women's Lib movement. In the frame of the cultural and social changes that occurred during the Fifth Republic
, they advocated the right of autonomy from their husbands, and the rights to contraception
and to abortion
.
In 1971, the feminist lawyer Gisèle Halimi
founded the group Choisir ("To Choose"), to protect the women who had signed the Manifeste des 343 salopes (Manifesto of 343 whores). This provocative title became popular after Cabu's drawing on a satirical journal with the caption: « Who got those 343 whores pregnant? ») admitting to have practiced illegal abortions, and therefore exposing themselves to judicial actions and prison sentences. The Manifesto had been published in Le Nouvel Observateur
on 5 April 1971. In 1972 Choisir transformed into a clearly reformist body, and the campaign greatly influenced the passing of the law allowing contraception and abortion carried through by Simone Veil
in 1975. The Veil Act was at the time hotly contested by Veil's own party, the conservative Union for French Democracy
(UDF).
In 1974, Françoise d'Eaubonne
coined the term of "ecofeminism
." The same year, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
was elected President
, and nominated 9 women in his government between 1974 and 1981: Simone Veil
, the first female minister, Françoise Giroud
, named Minister of the Feminine Condition, Hélène Dorlhac, Alice Saunier-Séïté, Annie Lesur and Christiane Scrivener
, Nicole Pasquier, Monique Pelletier and Hélène Missoffe. At the end of the 1970s, France was one of the leading countries in the world with respect to the number of female ministers, just behind Sweden
. However, they remained highly under-represented in the National Assembly
. There were only 14 female deputies (1.8%) in 1973 and 22 (2.8%) in 1978. Janine Alexandre-Derbay, 67-year-old senator of the Republican Party
(PR), initiated a hunger strike
to protest against the complete absence of women on the governmental majority's electoral lists in Paris.
This new, relative feminisation of power was partly explained by Giscard's government's fears of being confronted with another May 1968 and the influence of the MLF: "We can therefore explain the birth of state feminism under the pressure of contest feminism [féminisme de contestation]", wrote Christine Bard. Although the far-left remained indifferent to the feminisation of power, in 1974, Arlette Laguiller
became the first woman to present herself at a presidential election (for the Trotskyist party Workers' Struggle
, LO), and integrated feminist propositions in her party. Giscard's achievements concerning the inclusion of women in government has been qualified by Françoise Giroud as his most important feat, while others, such as Evelyne Surrot, Benoîte Groult
or the minister Monique Pelletier, denounced electoral "alibis". The sociologist Mariette Sineau underlined that Giscard included women only in the low-levels of the governmental hierarchy (state secretaries) and kept them in socio-educative affairs. Seven women in eighteen (from 1936 to 1981) had offices related to youth and education, and four (including two ministers) had offices related to health, reflecting a traditional gender division. The important Ministry of Finances, Defence, Foreign Affairs and Interior remained out of reach for women. Only six women in eighteen had been elected through universal suffrage. The rest were nominated by the Prime Minister. Hélène Missoffe was the only deputy to be named by Giscard.
and Bracha Ettinger.
The French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir
wrote novels; monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues; essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins
, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex
, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. It sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, she accepted Jean-Paul Sartre's
precept that existence precedes essence
; hence "one is not born a woman, but becomes one". Her analysis focuses on the social construction of Woman as the Other
, this de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression. She argues that women have historically been considered deviant and abnormal, and contends that even Mary Wollstonecraft
considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir argues that for feminism to move forward, this attitude must be set aside.
In the 1970s French feminists approached feminism with the concept of écriture féminine
(which translates as female, or feminine writing). Helene Cixous
argues that writing and philosophy are phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray
emphasize "writing from the body" as a subversive exercise. The work of the feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, Julia Kristeva
, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary criticism
in particular. From the 1980s onwards the work of the artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger has influenced literary criticism, art history and film theory. However, as the scholar Elizabeth Wright points out, "none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone
world".
of the socialist candidate François Mitterrand
in 1981, Yvette Roudy passed the 1983 law against sexism
.
Left and right-wing female ministers signed the Manifeste des 10 in 1996 for equal representation of women in politics.
In 1999, Florence Montreynaud launched the Chiennes de guarde NGO. Signatories included:
It was opposed by feminist psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco
, who believed the existing legislation was sufficient.
to the government by Nicolas Sarkozy
- Bouteldja qualified the NGO as an Ideological State Apparatus (AIE). They criticize the racist
and Islamophobic
stigmatization of immigrant populations, whose cultures are depicted as inherently sexist. They frame the debate among the French Left concerning the 2004 law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools
, mainly targeted against the hijab
, under this light. These authors criticize the instrumentalization by the Right of feminist discourse, aimed against immigrant populations
. They underline that sexism is not a specificity of immigrant populations, as if French culture itself were devoid of sexism, and that the focus on media-friendly and violent acts (such as the burning of Sohane Benziane
) silences the precarization of women.
A "third wave
" of the feminist movement arose around 2000, combining the issues of sexism and racism
, with an interest towards movements such as Black feminism
in the United States. In January 2007, the collective of the Féministes indigènes launched a manifesto in honour of the Mulatress Solitude on the website of the Indigènes de la République (Indigenous People of the Republic). She was a heroine who fought with Louis Delgrès
against the re-establishment of slavery, abolished during the French Revolution
) by Napoleon. The manifesto stated that "Western Feminism did not have the monopoly of resistance against masculine domination" and supported a mild form of separatism
, refusing to allow others (males or whites) to speak in their names.
Contemporary French feminism, compared to Anglophone feminism, is distinguished by an approach which is both more philosophical and more literary. Its texts are effusive, metaphorical, and conceptually rich, rather than pragmatic. They are not as concerned with immediate political doctrine or a "materialism" which is not of the body. Some writers most commonly associated with the "French feminist" label include Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, and Catherine Clement. Simone de Beauvoir is a clear forerunner of French feminism, as is Marguerite Duras. Common themes of this work include at least some degree of anti-essentialism, critical feminism, and a critique of phallogocentrism informed by contemporary developments in Continental philosophy.
Socialist
Ségolène Royal
was the first female presidential candidate to pass the first round of the French presidential election
in 2007, confronting the conservative UMP
candidate Nicolas Sarkozy
. Sarkozy won in a tight contest, but one year later, polls showed voters regretted not sending Royal to the Élysée Palace
and that she would win a 2008 match up with Sarkozy easily. She was a front-runner in their leadership election, which took place 20 November 2008 but was narrowly defeated in the second round by rival Martine Aubry
, also a woman.
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. A few famous figures emerged during the 1871 Paris Commune
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
, including Louise Michel
Louise Michel
Louise Michel was a French anarchist, school teacher and medical worker. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre...
, Russian-born Elisabeth Dmitrieff
Élisabeth Dmitrieff
Elisabeth Dmitrieff was a Russian-born feminist and actress of the 1871 Paris Commune. Born Elisaviéta Loukinitcha Koucheleva, she was a co-founder of the Women's Union, created on 11 April 1871, in a café of the rue du Temple, with Nathalie Lemel.-Life:Elisabeth Dmitrieff was the daughter of a...
, Nathalie Lemel
Nathalie Lemel
Nathalie Lemel , was a militant anarchist and feminist who participated on the barricades at the Commune de Paris of 1871. She was deported to Nouvelle Calédonie with Louise Michel.-The Bookbinder:...
, and Renée Vivien
Renée Vivien
Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn was a British poet who wrote in the French language. She took to heart all the mannerisms of Symbolism, as one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school...
(born in 1877).
French Revolution
In November 1789, at the very beginning of the Revolution, the Women's Petition was addressed to the National AssemblyWomen's Petition to the National Assembly
This petition was produced during the French Revolution and presented to the French National Assembly in November 1789 after The March on Versailles on 5 October 1789, proposing a decree by the National Assembly to give women equality. There were thousands of petitions presented to the National...
but not discussed. Although various feminist movements emerged during the Revolution, most politicians followed Rousseau's theories as outlined in Emile
Emile: Or, On Education
Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Émile was be...
, which confined women to the roles of mother and spouse. The philosopher Condorcet was a notable exception who advocated equal rights for both sexes.
The Société fraternelle de l'un et l'autre sexe (Fraternal Society of the Sexes) was founded in 1790 by Claude Dansart. It included prominent individuals such as Etta Palm d'Aelders
Etta Palm d'Aelders
Etta Lubina Johanna Palm d'Aelders was a Dutch feminist outspoken during the French Revolution. She gave the address Discourse on the Injustice of the Laws in Favour of Men, at the Expense of Women to the French National Convention on 30 December 1790.-Biography:Etta Aelders was the daughter of...
, Jacques Hébert
Jacques Hébert
Jacques René Hébert was a French journalist, and the founder and editor of the extreme radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne during the French Revolution...
, Louise-Félicité de Kéralio
Louise-Félicité de Kéralio
Louise-Félicité Guynement de Kéralio was a French writer and feminist, originating from the minor Breton nobility. She was the daughter of Louis-Félix Guynement de Kéralio and his wife Françoise Abeille...
, Pauline Léon
Pauline Léon
Pauline Léon , was a radical organizer and feminist during the French Revolution.-Biography:Léon was born to chocolate makers Pierre-Paul Léon and Mathrine Telohan in Paris on 28 September 1768, one of six children...
, Théroigne de Méricourt, Madame Roland
Madame Roland
Marie-Jeanne Roland, better known simply as Madame Roland and born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon , was, together with her husband Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, a supporter of the French Revolution and influential member of the Girondist faction...
, Talien and Merlin de Thionville. The following year, Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges , born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience....
published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen , also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written in 1791 by French activist and playwright Olympe de Gouges...
. This was a letter addressed to Queen Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
which requested actions in favour of women's rights
Women's rights
Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
. Gouges was guillotine
Guillotine
The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...
d two years later, days after the execution of the Girondins.
In February 1793, Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe
Claire Lacombe
Claire Lacombe nicknamed "Red Rosa," was an actress in her early life, but is best known for her contributions during the French Revolution...
created the exclusively-female Société des républicaines révolutionnaires (Society of Revolutionary Republicans — the final "e" in "républicaines " explicitly denoting Republican Women), which boasted two hundred members. Viewed by the historian Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin
Daniel Guérin was a French libertarian and author, best known for his work Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, as well as his collection No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism in which he collected writings on the idea and movement it inspired, from the first writings of Max Stirner in the...
as a sort of "feminist section of the Enragés
Enragés
Les Enragés were a loose amalgam of radicals active during the French Revolution. Politically they stood to the left of the Jacobins. Represented by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc, Jean Varlet and others, they believed that liberty for all meant more than mere constitutional rights...
", they participated in the fall of the Girondins. Lacombe advocated giving weapons to women. However, the Society was outlawed by the revolutionary government in the following year.
From the Restoration to the Second Republic
The feminist movement expanded again in Socialist movements of the RomanticRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
generation, in particular among Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
ian Saint Simonians
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon was a French early socialist theorist whose thought influenced the foundations of various 19th century philosophies; perhaps most notably Marxism, positivism and the discipline of sociology...
. Women freely adopted new lifestyles, inciting indignation in public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
. They claimed equality of rights and participated in the abundant literary activity
French literature of the 19th century
19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire...
, such as Claire Démar's Appel au peuple sur l'affranchissement de la femme (1833), a feminist pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
. On the other hand, Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
François Marie Charles Fourier was a French philosopher. An influential thinker, some of Fourier's social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become main currents in modern society...
's Utopian Socialist theory of passions advocated "free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
." His architectural model of the phalanstery community explicitly took into account women's emancipation.
The Bourbon Restoration
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
re-established the prohibition of divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
in 1816. When the July Monarchy
July Monarchy
The July Monarchy , officially the Kingdom of France , was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848...
restricted the political rights of the majority of the population, the feminist struggle rejoined the Republican and Socialist struggle for a "Democratic and Social Republic," leading to the 1848 Revolution and the proclamation of the Second Republic.
The 1848 Revolution became the occasion of a public expression of the feminist movement, who organized itself in various associations. Women's political activities led several of them to be proscribed as the other Forty-Eighters
Forty-Eighters
The Forty-Eighters were Europeans who participated in or supported the revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe. In Germany, the Forty-Eighters favored unification of the German people, a more democratic government, and guarantees of human rights...
.
The Commune
Some women organized a feminist movement during the Commune, following up on earlier attempts in 1789 and 1848. Nathalie LemelNathalie Lemel
Nathalie Lemel , was a militant anarchist and feminist who participated on the barricades at the Commune de Paris of 1871. She was deported to Nouvelle Calédonie with Louise Michel.-The Bookbinder:...
, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff
Élisabeth Dmitrieff
Elisabeth Dmitrieff was a Russian-born feminist and actress of the 1871 Paris Commune. Born Elisaviéta Loukinitcha Koucheleva, she was a co-founder of the Women's Union, created on 11 April 1871, in a café of the rue du Temple, with Nathalie Lemel.-Life:Elisabeth Dmitrieff was the daughter of a...
, a young Russian exile and member of the Russian section of the First International (IWA), created the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and Care of the Injured") on 11 April 1871. The feminist writer André Léo, a friend of Paule Minck, was also active in the Women's Union. The association demanded gender equality
Gender equality
Gender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...
, wage equality, right of divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
for women, and right to secular
Secular education
Secular education is the system of public education in countries with a secular government or separation between religion and state.An example of a highly secular educational system would be the French public educational system, going as far as to ban conspicuous religious symbols in schools.In...
and professional education for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and concubines, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
in closing the maisons de tolérance, or legal official brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
s.
The Women's Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops. Along with Eugène Varlin
Eugène Varlin
Eugène Varlin was a French socialist, communard and member of the First International. He was one of the pioneers of French syndicalism.-Early Activism:...
, Nathalie Le Mel created the cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
restaurant La Marmite, which served free food for indigents, and then fought during the Bloody Week on the barricades On the other hand, Paule Minck opened a free school in the Church of Saint Pierre de Montmartre
Saint Pierre de Montmartre
The Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre is the lesser known of the two main churches on Montmartre in Paris, the other being the 19th-century Sacré-Cœur Basilica...
, and animated the Club Saint-Sulpice on the Left Bank. The Russian Anne Jaclard
Anne Jaclard
Note: This article deals with the Russian-born nineteenth-century revolutionary, not with the American Marxist-Humanist theoretician Anne Jaclard....
, who declined to marry Dostoievsky and finally became the wife of Blanquist activist Victor Jaclard
Victor Jaclard
Charles Victor Jaclard was a French revolutionary socialist, a member of the First International and of the Paris Commune.-Early Life:...
, founded with André Léo the newspaper La Sociale. She was also a member of the Comité de vigilance de Montmartre
Comité de vigilance de Montmartre
The Vigilance Committee of Montmartre was a political association and provisional administrative organization established on the Rue de Clignancourt shortly before the siege of Paris...
, along with Louise Michel and Paule Minck, as well as of the Russian section of the First International. Victorine Brocher, close to the IWA activists and founder of a cooperative bakery in 1867, also fought during the Commune and the Bloody Week.
Famous figures such as Louise Michel
Louise Michel
Louise Michel was a French anarchist, school teacher and medical worker. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre...
, the "Red Virgin of Montmartre" who joined the National Guard
National Guard (France)
The National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
and would later be sent to New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...
, symbolize the active participation of a small number of women in the insurrectionary events. A female battalion from the National Guard defended the Place Blanche
Place Blanche
Place Blanche in Paris, France is one of the small plazas along the Boulevard de Clichy, which runs between the 9th and 18th arrondissements and leads into Montmartre....
during the repression.
Under the Third Republic
In 1909, French noblewoman and feminist Jeanne-Elizabeth Schmahl founded the French Union for Women's Suffrage to advocate for women's right to vote in France.Despite some cultural changes following World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, which had resulted in women replacing the male workers who had gone to the front, they were known as the Années folles and their exuberance was restricted to a very small group of female elites. Victor Margueritte
Victor Margueritte
Victor Margueritte and his brother Paul Margueritte, , French novelists, both born in Algeria, were the sons of General Jean Auguste Margueritte , who after an honorable career in Algeria was mortally wounded in the great cavalry charge at Sedan, and died in Belgium, on September 6, 1870...
's La Garçonne (The Flapper, 1922), depicting an emancipated woman, was seen as scandalous and caused him to lose his Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
. During the Third Republic, the suffragettes movement championed the right to vote for women, but did not insist on the access of women to legislative and executive offices. The suffragettes, however, did honour the achievements of foreign women in power by bringing attention to legislation passed under their influence concerning alcohol (such as Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
in the United States), regulation of prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, and protection of children's rights
Children's rights
Children's rights are the human rights of children with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to the young, including their right to association with both biological parents, human identity as well as the basic needs for food, universal state-paid education,...
. Despite this campaign and the new role of women following World War I, the Third Republic declined to grant them voting rights, mainly because of fear of the influence of clericalism
Clericalism
Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based, leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of either the church or broader political and sociocultural import...
among them, echoing the conservative vote of rural areas for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
Louis Napoleon may refer to:* Louis Bonaparte or Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, , King Louis I of Holland, brother of Napoleon I* Napoléon Louis Bonaparte , King Louis II of Holland, second son of Louis Bonaparte...
during the Second Republic
French Second Republic
The French Second Republic was the republican government of France between the 1848 Revolution and the coup by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte which initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité...
.
A few women acceded to political responsibilities in the 1930s, although they kept a low profile. In 1936, the new Prime Minister, Léon Blum
Léon Blum
André Léon Blum was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.-First political experiences:...
, included three women in the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
government: Cécile Brunschvicg
Cécile Brunschvicg
Cécile Brunschvicg , born Cécile Kahn , was a French feminist politician....
, Suzanne Lacore
Suzanne Lacore
Suzanne Lacore was a French politician representing the SFIO Party.In early life she was a teacher and then head teacher of a primary school in the Dordogne. She became a militant socialist in 1906 and was the only woman in her area to be a member of a political party...
and Irène Joliot-Curie
Irène Joliot-Curie
Irène Joliot-Curie was a French scientist, the daughter of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. This made the Curies...
. Although Blum's feminism has been subject to debate, he had defended voting rights for women, a proposition included in the program of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) party since 1906. However, he did not implement this measure because of the opposition of the Radical-Socialist Party. The inclusion of women in the Popular Front government was unanimously appreciated: even the far-right candidate Xavier Vallat
Xavier Vallat
Xavier Vallat , French politician, was Commissioner-General for Jewish Questions in the wartime Vichy collaborationist government, and was sentenced after World War II to ten years in prison for his part in the persecution of French Jews.- Until World War II :Vallat was born in the department of...
addressed his "congratulations" to Blum for this measure while the conservative newspaper Le Temps
Le Temps
Founded in 1998, Le Temps is a Swiss newspaper edited in French. Le Temps consists of a daily newspaper , several supplements , thematic special editions, a performing website and digital applications.Le Temps is the...
wrote, on 1 June 1936, that women could be ministers without previous authorizations from their husbands. Cécile Brunschvicg and Irène Joliot-Curie were both legally "under-age" as women. At the end of the 1930s, the right-wing did not oppose women's right to vote anymore, partially because the female vote could be turned to their advantage.
Post-war
Women obtained the right to vote only with the Provisional Government of the French RepublicProvisional Government of the French Republic
The Provisional Government of the French Republic was an interim government which governed France from 1944 to 1946, following the fall of Vichy France and prior to the Fourth French Republic....
(GPRF)'s ordinance
Ordonnance (French constitutional law)
In the Government of France, an ordonnance is a statute passed by the Council of Ministers in an area of law normally reserved for statute law passed by the Parliament of France....
of 21 April 1944. The Consultative Assembly of Algiers of 1944 proposed on 24 March 1944 to grant eligibility to women. Following an amendment by the communist
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
deputy Fernand Grenier
Fernand Grenier
-Background:He was born on June 28, 1927 near Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and made a career in education.-Member of the legislature:Grenier ran as a Union Nationale and won a seat to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec in the 1966 provincial election in the district of Frontenac...
, they were given full citizenship, including the right to vote. Grenier's proposition was adopted 51 to 16. In May 1947, following the November 1946 elections
French legislative election, November 1946
Legislative election was held in France on 10 November 1946 to elect the first National Assembly of the Fourth Republic. The electoral system used was proportional representation....
, the sociologist Robert Verdier minimized the "gender gap
Gender gap
Gender gap may refer to:*Gender differences in a general psycho-social context*Gender pay gap*Income disparity by gender in a purely economic context*The Global Gender Gap Report*Father's rights in child custody determinations of family courts...
," stating in Le Populaire that women had not voted in a consistent way, dividing themselves, as men, according to social classes. Despite these progresses, and the inclusion in the 1946 Constitution
Constitution of France
The current Constitution of France was adopted on 4 October 1958. It is typically called the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and replaced that of the Fourth Republic dating from 1946. Charles de Gaulle was the main driving force in introducing the new constitution and inaugurating the Fifth...
of the "equality of rights" between women and men, inequalities persist until today. During the baby boom
Post-World War II baby boom
The end of World War II brought a baby boom to many countries, especially Western ones. There is some disagreement as to the precise beginning and ending dates of the post-war baby boom, but it is most often agreed to begin in the years immediately after the war, ending more than a decade later;...
period, feminism again became a minor movement, despite forerunners such as Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, who published The Second Sex
The Second Sex
The Second Sex is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book...
in 1949. Wars (both World War I and World War II) had seen the provisional emancipation of some, individual, women, but post-war periods signalled the return to conservative roles. For instance, Lucie Aubrac
Lucie Aubrac
Lucie Samuel born Lucie Bernard , and better known as Lucie Aubrac, was a French history teacher and member of the French Resistance during World War II....
, who was active in the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
— a role highlighted by Gaullist myths — returned to private life after the war. Thirty-three women were elected at the Liberation, but none entered the government, and the euphoria of the Liberation was quickly halted.
Women retained a low profile during the Fourth
French Fourth Republic
The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II, and suffered many of the same problems...
and Fifth Republic
French Fifth Republic
The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...
. In 1949, Jeanne-Paule Sicard was the first female chief of staff, but was called "Mr. Pleven
René Pleven
René Pléven was a notable French politician of the Fourth Republic. A member of the Free French, he helped found the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance , a political party that was meant to be a successor to the wartime Resistance movement...
's (then Minister of Defence
Minister of Defence (France)
The Minister of Defense and Veterans Affairs is the French government cabinet member charged with running the military of France....
) secretary." Marie-France Garaud, who entered Jean Foyer
Jean Foyer
Jean Foyer was a French politician and minister. He studied law and became a law professor at the university...
's office at the Ministry of Cooperation and would later become President Georges Pompidou's
Georges Pompidou
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968, holding the longest tenure in this position, and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974.-Biography:...
main counsellor, along with Pierre Juillet, was given the same title. The leftist newspaper Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
, founded in 1973 by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, would depict Marie-France Garaud as yet another figure of female spin-doctors. However, the new role granted to the President of the Republic in the semi-presidential regime of the Fifth Republic after the 1962 referendum on the election of the President at direct universal suffrage
French presidential election referendum, 1962
A referendum on the direct election of the President was held in France on 28 October 1962. It was approved by 62.3% of voters with a 77.0% turnout...
, led to a greater role of the "First Lady of France". Although Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's wife Yvonne remained out of the public sphere, the image of Claude Pompidou
Claude Pompidou
Claude Jacqueline Pompidou was the wife of President of France Georges Pompidou. She was a philanthropist and a patron of modern art, especially through the Centre Georges Pompidou.-Life before politics:...
would interest the media more and more. The media frenzy surrounding Cécilia Sarkozy
Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz
Cécilia María Sara Isabel Attias was the second wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy until October 2007....
, former wife of the current President Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
, would mark the culmination of this current.
Difficult access to governmental responsibilities for women (1945-1974)
Of the 27 cabinets formed during the Fourth RepublicFrench Fourth Republic
The French Fourth Republic was the republican government of France between 1946 and 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic, which was in place before World War II, and suffered many of the same problems...
, only four included women, and never more than one at a time. SFIO member Andrée Viénot, widow of a Resistant, was nominated in June 1946 by the Christian democrat Georges Bidault
Georges Bidault
Georges-Augustin Bidault was a French politician. During World War II, he was active in the French Resistance. After the war, he served as foreign minister and prime minister on several occasions before he joined the Organisation armée secrète.-Early life:...
of the Popular Republican Movement
Popular Republican Movement
The Popular Republican Movement was a French Christian democratic party of the Fourth Republic...
as Under-State Secretary to Youth and Sports. However, she remained in office for only seven months. The next woman to accede to governmental responsibilities, Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
Germaine Poinso-Chapuis was a French politician. She was the first woman to hold a Cabinet-level post in the French government...
, was minister of Health and Education from 24 November 1947 to 19 July 1948 in Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman was a noted Luxembourgish-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian Democrat and an independent political thinker and activist...
's cabinet. Remaining one year in office, her name remained attached to a decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
financing private education
Education in France
The French educational system is highly centralized, organized, and ramified. It is divided into three different stages:* the primary education ;* secondary education ;...
. Published in the Journal officiel on 22 May 1948 with her signature, the decree had been drafted in her absence at the Council of Ministers of France. The Communist and the Radical-Socialist Party called for the repealing of the decree, and finally, Schuman's cabinet was overturned after failing a confidence motion on the subject. Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
Germaine Poinso-Chapuis
Germaine Poinso-Chapuis was a French politician. She was the first woman to hold a Cabinet-level post in the French government...
did not pursue her political career, encouraged to abandon it by Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
.
The third woman to accede to governmental responsibilities would be the Radical-Socialist Jacqueline Thome-Patenôtre, nominated Under-State Secretary to Reconstruction and Lodging in Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury
Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury
Maurice Jean Marie Bourgès-Maunoury was a French Radical politician who served as Prime Minister in the Fourth Republic during 1957.He is famous, especially, for fulfilling prominent ministerial role in the government during the Suez Crisis....
's cabinet in 1957. Nafissa Sid Cara then participated to the government as State Secretary in charge of Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
from 1959 till the end of the war in 1962
Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France...
. Marie-Madeleine Dienesch, who evolved from Christian-Democracy to Gaullism (in 1966), occupied various offices as State Secretary between 1968 and 1974. Finally, Suzanne Ploux was State Secretary for the Minister of National Education in 1973 and 1974. In total, only seven women acceded to governmental offices between 1946 and 1974, and only one as minister. Historians explain this rarity by underlining the specific context of the Trente Glorieuses
Trente Glorieuses
Les Trente Glorieuses refers to the thirty years from 1945-1975 following the end of the Second World War in France. The name was first used by the French demographer Jean Fourastié...
(Thirty Glorious Years) and of the baby boom, leading to a strengthening of familialism
Familialism
Familialism is an ideology that promotes the family of the Western tradition as an institution. Familialism views the nuclear family of one father, one mother, and their child or children as the central and primary social unit of human ordering and the principal unit of a functioning society and...
and patriarchy
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
.
Even left-wing cabinets abstained from nominating women: Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès-France
Pierre Mendès France was a French politician. He descended from a Portuguese Jewish family that moved to France in the sixteenth century.-Third Republic and World War II:...
(advised by Colette Baudry) did not include any woman in his cabinet, neither did Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet
Guy Mollet was a French Socialist politician. He led the French Section of the Workers' International party from 1946 to 1969 and was Prime Minister in 1956–1957.-Early life and World War II:...
, the secretary general of the SFIO, nor the centrist Antoine Pinay
Antoine Pinay
Antoine Pinay |Rhône]], France – 13 December 1994) was a French conservative politician. He served as Prime Minister of France in 1952.-Life:As a young man, Pinay fought in World War I and injured his arm so that it was paralyzed for the rest of his life....
. Although the École nationale d'administration
École nationale d'administration
The École Nationale d'Administration , one of the most prestigious of French graduate schools , was created in 1945 by Charles de Gaulle to democratise access to the senior civil service. It is now entrusted with the selection and initial training of senior French officials...
(ENA) elite administrative school (from which a lot of French politicians graduate) became gender-mixed in 1945, only 18 women graduated from it between 1946 and 1956 (compared to 706 men).
Of the first eleven cabinets of the Fifth Republic
French Fifth Republic
The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...
, four did not count any women. In May 1968, the cabinet was exclusively male. This low representation of women was not, however, specific to France: West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
's government did not include any women in any office from 1949 to 1961, and in 1974-1975, only 12 countries in the world had female ministers. The British government had exclusively male ministers.
May 1968 and its aftermath
A strong feminist movement would only emerge in the aftermath of May 1968, with the creation of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (Women's Liberation Movement, MLF), allegedly by Antoinette FouqueAntoinette Fouque
Antoinette Fouque , is a psychoanalyst and one of the leading figures of the French women's liberation movement....
, Monique Wittig
Monique Wittig
Monique Wittig was a French author and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964...
and Josiane Chanel in 1968. The name itself was given by the press, in reference to the US Women's Lib movement. In the frame of the cultural and social changes that occurred during the Fifth Republic
French Fifth Republic
The Fifth Republic is the fifth and current republican constitution of France, introduced on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, replacing the prior parliamentary government with a semi-presidential system...
, they advocated the right of autonomy from their husbands, and the rights to contraception
Contraception
Contraception is the prevention of the fusion of gametes during or after sexual activity. The term contraception is a contraction of contra, which means against, and the word conception, meaning fertilization...
and to abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
In 1971, the feminist lawyer Gisèle Halimi
Gisèle Halimi
Gisèle Halimi, born Zeiza Gisèle Élise Taïeb in 1927, is a French-Tunisian lawyer, feminist activist, and essayist.-Career:Born in La Goulette, to a Jewish mother and father, she was educated at a French lycée in Tunis, and then attended the University of Paris, graduating in law and philosophy...
founded the group Choisir ("To Choose"), to protect the women who had signed the Manifeste des 343 salopes (Manifesto of 343 whores). This provocative title became popular after Cabu's drawing on a satirical journal with the caption: « Who got those 343 whores pregnant? ») admitting to have practiced illegal abortions, and therefore exposing themselves to judicial actions and prison sentences. The Manifesto had been published in Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur
Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine. Based in Paris, it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation ....
on 5 April 1971. In 1972 Choisir transformed into a clearly reformist body, and the campaign greatly influenced the passing of the law allowing contraception and abortion carried through by Simone Veil
Simone Veil
Simone Veil, DBE is a French lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France....
in 1975. The Veil Act was at the time hotly contested by Veil's own party, the conservative Union for French Democracy
Union for French Democracy
The Union for French Democracy was a French centrist political party. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to counterbalance the Gaullist preponderance over the right. This name was chosen due to the title of Giscard d'Estaing's...
(UDF).
In 1974, Françoise d'Eaubonne
Françoise d'Eaubonne
Françoise d'Eaubonne was a French feminist, who introduced the term ecofeminism in 1974....
coined the term of "ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...
." The same year, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...
was elected President
French presidential election, 1974
Presidential elections were held in :France in 1974, following the death of President Georges Pompidou. They went to a second round, and were won by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing by a margin of 1.6%...
, and nominated 9 women in his government between 1974 and 1981: Simone Veil
Simone Veil
Simone Veil, DBE is a French lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France....
, the first female minister, Françoise Giroud
Françoise Giroud
Françoise Giroud, born France Gourdji was a French journalist, screenwriter, writer and politician.-Biography:...
, named Minister of the Feminine Condition, Hélène Dorlhac, Alice Saunier-Séïté, Annie Lesur and Christiane Scrivener
Christiane Scrivener
Christiane Scrivener is a French politician, a member of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's Parti républicain ....
, Nicole Pasquier, Monique Pelletier and Hélène Missoffe. At the end of the 1970s, France was one of the leading countries in the world with respect to the number of female ministers, just behind Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. However, they remained highly under-represented in the National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....
. There were only 14 female deputies (1.8%) in 1973 and 22 (2.8%) in 1978. Janine Alexandre-Derbay, 67-year-old senator of the Republican Party
Republican Party (France)
The Republican Party was a French right-wing political party founded in 1977. It replaced the National Federation of the Independent Republicans that was founded in 1966. It was created by former President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing...
(PR), initiated a hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
to protest against the complete absence of women on the governmental majority's electoral lists in Paris.
This new, relative feminisation of power was partly explained by Giscard's government's fears of being confronted with another May 1968 and the influence of the MLF: "We can therefore explain the birth of state feminism under the pressure of contest feminism [féminisme de contestation]", wrote Christine Bard. Although the far-left remained indifferent to the feminisation of power, in 1974, Arlette Laguiller
Arlette Laguiller
Arlette Yvonne Laguiller is a French Trotskyist politician. Since 1973, she has been the spokeswoman and the best known leader and perennial candidate of the Lutte Ouvrière political party...
became the first woman to present herself at a presidential election (for the Trotskyist party Workers' Struggle
Workers' Struggle
Lutte Ouvrière is the usual name under which the Union Communiste , a French Trotskyist political party, is known, after the name of its weekly paper. Arlette Laguiller has been its spokeswoman since 1973 and has run in each presidential election, but Robert Barcia was its founder and central...
, LO), and integrated feminist propositions in her party. Giscard's achievements concerning the inclusion of women in government has been qualified by Françoise Giroud as his most important feat, while others, such as Evelyne Surrot, Benoîte Groult
Benoîte Groult
Benoîte Groult is a French writer.- Biography :Groult, the daughter of a fashion designer, was raised in the Parisian upper class. After her studies in literature ended in 1953, she worked as a journalist for television...
or the minister Monique Pelletier, denounced electoral "alibis". The sociologist Mariette Sineau underlined that Giscard included women only in the low-levels of the governmental hierarchy (state secretaries) and kept them in socio-educative affairs. Seven women in eighteen (from 1936 to 1981) had offices related to youth and education, and four (including two ministers) had offices related to health, reflecting a traditional gender division. The important Ministry of Finances, Defence, Foreign Affairs and Interior remained out of reach for women. Only six women in eighteen had been elected through universal suffrage. The rest were nominated by the Prime Minister. Hélène Missoffe was the only deputy to be named by Giscard.
French feminist theory
The term 'French feminism' refers to a branch of feminist theories and philosophies that emerged in the 1970s to the 1990s. French feminist theory, compared to Anglophone feminisms, is distinguished by an approach which is more philosophical and literary. Its writings tend to be effusive and metaphorical being less concerned with political doctrine and generally focused on theories of "the body". The term includes writers who are not French, but who have worked substantially in France and the French tradition such as Julia KristevaJulia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
and Bracha Ettinger.
The French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
wrote novels; monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues; essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins
The Mandarins
The Mandarins is a 1954 roman-à-clef by Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir was awarded the Prix Goncourt prize in 1954 for The Mandarins. It was first published in English in 1957....
, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex
The Second Sex
The Second Sex is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book...
, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. It sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, she accepted Jean-Paul Sartre's
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
precept that existence precedes essence
Existence precedes essence
The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence or nature of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence...
; hence "one is not born a woman, but becomes one". Her analysis focuses on the social construction of Woman as the Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
, this de Beauvoir identifies as fundamental to women's oppression. She argues that women have historically been considered deviant and abnormal, and contends that even Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir argues that for feminism to move forward, this attitude must be set aside.
In the 1970s French feminists approached feminism with the concept of écriture féminine
Écriture féminine
Écriture féminine, literally "women's writing," more closely, the inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text, is a strain of feminist literary theory that originated in France in the early 1970s and included foundational theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Monique...
(which translates as female, or feminine writing). Helene Cixous
Hélène Cixous
Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College...
argues that writing and philosophy are phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
emphasize "writing from the body" as a subversive exercise. The work of the feminist psychoanalyst and philosopher, Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
, has influenced feminist theory in general and feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
in particular. From the 1980s onwards the work of the artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger has influenced literary criticism, art history and film theory. However, as the scholar Elizabeth Wright points out, "none of these French feminists align themselves with the feminist movement as it appeared in the Anglophone
Anglosphere
Anglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
world".
From the 1980s to today
After the electionFrench presidential election, 1981
The French presidential election of 1981 took place on 10 May 1981, giving the presidency of France to François Mitterrand, the first Socialist president of the Fifth Republic....
of the socialist candidate François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...
in 1981, Yvette Roudy passed the 1983 law against sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
.
Left and right-wing female ministers signed the Manifeste des 10 in 1996 for equal representation of women in politics.
In 1999, Florence Montreynaud launched the Chiennes de guarde NGO. Signatories included:
- Michelle Perrot
- Isabelle AutissierIsabelle AutissierIsabelle Autissier is a French sailor, navigator, writer, and broadcaster. She is celebrated for being the first woman to have completed a solo world navigation in competition ....
- Laure Adler
- Boris CyrulnikBoris CyrulnikBoris Cyrulnik is a French doctor, ethologist, neurologist, and psychiatrist.Being of Jewish origin, he was entrusted to protection from a foster family. In 194x he was taken with adults in a nazi-led capture in Bordeaux...
- Jacques GaillotJacques GaillotThe Most Reverend Dr. Jacques Jean Edmond Georges Monseigneur Gaillot , Titular Bishop of Partenia, is a French Catholic clergyman and social activist. He was from 1982 to 1995 Bishop of Évreux in France...
- Pascal BrucknerPascal BrucknerPascal Bruckner is a French writer.-Biography:After studies at the university Paris I and Paris VII Diderot, and then at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Bruckner became maître de conférences at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, and collaborator at the Nouvel Observateur.Bruckner...
- Françoise HéritierFrançoise HéritierFrançoise Héritier is a French anthropologist and successor to Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Collège de France . Her work deals mainly with the theory of alliances and on the prohibition of incest...
- Alain TouraineAlain TouraineAlain Touraine is a French sociologist born in Hermanville-sur-Mer. He is research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux . He is best known for being the originator of the term "post-industrial society"...
- Olivier DuhamelOlivier DuhamelOlivier Duhamel is a French university professor and politician. He was a Socialist member of the European Parliament from 1997 to 2004.-Biography:Olivier Duhamel was born on 2 May 1950 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France....
- Geneviève FraisseGeneviève FraisseGeneviève Fraisse is a French philosopher.She was born within Murs blancs , a community founded by Emmanuel Mounier at Châtenay-Malabry. Her parents, Paul Fraisse and Simone Fraisse , were both professors at the Sorbonne...
- Alain LipietzAlain LipietzAlain Lipietz is a French engineer, economist and politician, a Member of the European Parliament, and a member of the French Green Party.-Education:...
- Yves CochetYves CochetYves Cochet is a French politician, member of The Greens. He was minister in the government of Lionel Jospin.He wrote Apocalypse pétrole which was published in 2005.-External links:*...
- Roselyne Bachot
- Véronique Neiertz
- Huguette BouchardeauHuguette BouchardeauHuguette Bouchardeau is a French socialist politician, as well as a publisher , essayist, and biographer.-Political career:...
- Régis DebrayRégis DebrayJules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
- Pierre-André TaguieffPierre-André TaguieffPierre-André Taguieff is a philosopher and director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in an Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris laboratory, the CEVIPOF...
- André Comte-Sponteville.
It was opposed by feminist psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco
Elisabeth Roudinesco
Élisabeth Roudinesco is a French academic historian and psychoanalyst. She is an independent guest researcher at University of Paris VII – Denis Diderot...
, who believed the existing legislation was sufficient.
Multiculturalism debates
The creation of the NGO Ni putes, ni soumises (Neither Whores, Nor Submissives) in 2002 was also largely mediatized. Several authors have denounced an instrumentalization of feminism by state authorities (a "state feminism" ), of which Ni Putes, ni soumises is an example, with the nomination of Fadela AmaraFadela Amara
Fadéla Amara, also known as Fatiha Amara is a French feminist and politician, who began her political life as an advocate for women in the impoverished banlieues. She was the Secretary of State for Urban Policies in the conservative Union for a Popular Movement government of French Prime Minister...
to the government by Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
- Bouteldja qualified the NGO as an Ideological State Apparatus (AIE). They criticize the racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and Islamophobic
Islamophobia
Islamophobia describes prejudice against, hatred or irrational fear of Islam or MuslimsThe term dates back to the late 1980s or early 1990s, but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States....
stigmatization of immigrant populations, whose cultures are depicted as inherently sexist. They frame the debate among the French Left concerning the 2004 law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools
French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools
The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools...
, mainly targeted against the hijab
Hijab
The word "hijab" or "'" refers to both the head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women and modest Muslim styles of dress in general....
, under this light. These authors criticize the instrumentalization by the Right of feminist discourse, aimed against immigrant populations
Demographics of France
This article is about the demographic features of the population of France, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects....
. They underline that sexism is not a specificity of immigrant populations, as if French culture itself were devoid of sexism, and that the focus on media-friendly and violent acts (such as the burning of Sohane Benziane
Sohane Benziane
Sohane Benziane was a French girl of Algerian ancestry who was murdered at the age of 17.On October 4, 2002 in Vitry-sur-Seine, South of Paris, 17 year old Sohane Benziane, the daughter of Kabyle immigrants, was burned alive in front of her friends in a cellar by her former boyfriend, a local caid...
) silences the precarization of women.
A "third wave
Third-wave feminism
Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present...
" of the feminist movement arose around 2000, combining the issues of sexism and racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, with an interest towards movements such as Black feminism
Black feminism
Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would...
in the United States. In January 2007, the collective of the Féministes indigènes launched a manifesto in honour of the Mulatress Solitude on the website of the Indigènes de la République (Indigenous People of the Republic). She was a heroine who fought with Louis Delgrès
Louis Delgrès
Louis Delgrès was a mulatto leader of the movement in Guadeloupe resisting reoccupation by Napoleonic France in 1802...
against the re-establishment of slavery, abolished during the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
) by Napoleon. The manifesto stated that "Western Feminism did not have the monopoly of resistance against masculine domination" and supported a mild form of separatism
Separatist feminism
Separatist feminism is a form of radical feminism that holds that opposition to patriarchy is best done through focusing exclusively on women and girls...
, refusing to allow others (males or whites) to speak in their names.
Contemporary French feminism, compared to Anglophone feminism, is distinguished by an approach which is both more philosophical and more literary. Its texts are effusive, metaphorical, and conceptually rich, rather than pragmatic. They are not as concerned with immediate political doctrine or a "materialism" which is not of the body. Some writers most commonly associated with the "French feminist" label include Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Monique Wittig, and Catherine Clement. Simone de Beauvoir is a clear forerunner of French feminism, as is Marguerite Duras. Common themes of this work include at least some degree of anti-essentialism, critical feminism, and a critique of phallogocentrism informed by contemporary developments in Continental philosophy.
Socialist
Socialist Party (France)
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the center-right Union for a Popular Movement...
Ségolène Royal
Ségolène Royal
Marie-Ségolène Royal , known as Ségolène Royal, is a French politician. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the National Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party...
was the first female presidential candidate to pass the first round of the French presidential election
French presidential election, 2007
The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France for a five-year term.The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy...
in 2007, confronting the conservative UMP
Union for a Popular Movement
The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France, and one of the two major contemporary political parties in the country along with the center-left Socialist Party...
candidate Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
. Sarkozy won in a tight contest, but one year later, polls showed voters regretted not sending Royal to the Élysée Palace
Élysée Palace
The Élysée Palace is the official residence of the President of the French Republic, containing his office, and is where the Council of Ministers meets. It is located near the Champs-Élysées in Paris....
and that she would win a 2008 match up with Sarkozy easily. She was a front-runner in their leadership election, which took place 20 November 2008 but was narrowly defeated in the second round by rival Martine Aubry
Martine Aubry
Martine Aubry is a French politician. She has been the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party since November 2008 and Mayor of Lille since March 2001...
, also a woman.
See also
- History of the Left in FranceHistory of the Left in FranceThe Left in France at the beginning of the 20th century was represented by two main political parties, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party and the French Section of the Workers' International , created in 1905 as a merger of various Marxist parties...
- LGBT rights in France
- Protests of 1968Protests of 1968The protests of 1968 consisted of a worldwide series of protests, largely participated in by students and workers.-Background:Background speculations of overall causality vary about the political protests centering on the year 1968. Some argue that protests could be attributed to the social changes...
- State feminismState feminismState feminism is feminism created or approved by the government of a state or nation. It usually specifies a particular program. The government may, at the same time, prohibit non-governmental organizations from advocating for any other feminist program....
- Marie-Laure Sauty de ChalonMarie-Laure Sauty de ChalonMarie-Laure Sauty de Chalon is a French businesswoman and feminist. She is currently the CEO of the auFeminin.com group, Europe's leading Internet portal dedicated to women's content. Le Figaro went further, calling her company number one in that category...
Further reading
- Marie Cerati, Le club des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires, Paris, éd. sociales, 1966
- Marc de Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes et des légions d’Amazones (1793-1848-1871), Paris, Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1910
- Carolyn Eichner, Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune, Indiana University Press, 2004
- Eric Fassin, Clarisse Fabre, Liberté, égalité, sexualités, Belfond 2003.
- M. Jaspard, Enquête sur les violences faites aux femmes, La documentation française, 2002.