Feminism in France

Feminism in France founds its origins in the French Revolution. A few famous figures emerged during the 1871 Paris Commune, among whom Louise Michel, Russian-born Elisabeth Dmitrieff, Nathalie Lemel and Renée Vivien.

French Revolution

Further information: French Revolution

In November 1789, at the very beginning of the Revolution, a Women's Petition was adressed to the National Assembly. However, it was not discussed. Although various feminist movements emerged during the Revolution, most politicians stood on Rousseau's bases outlined in L'Emile, which confined women to the role of mothers and spouses. Condorcet was a notable exception to the rule.

Claude Dansart founded in 1790 the Société fraternelle de l'un et l'autre sexe (Fraternal Society of one and the other Sex), which included Etta Palm d'Aelders, Jacques Hébert, Louise-Félicité de Kéralio, Pauline Léon, Théroigne de Méricourt, Manon Roland, Talien and Merlin de Thionville. The following year, Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, a letter addressed to Queen Marie Antoinette which requested actions in favour of women's rights. Gouges ended up guillotined.

In February 1793, Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe created the Société des républicaines révolutionnaires (Society of Revolutionary Republicans — the final "e" implicitly referring to Republican Women), which boasted 200 exclusively female members. Qualified by the historian Daniel Guérin as a sort of "feminist section of the Enragés" , they participated to the fall of the Girondins. Lacombe advocated arming of the women. The Society, however, was outlawed by the revolutionary government on the following year.

From the Restoration to the Second Republic

The feminist movement developed itself again in Socialist movements of the Romantic generation, in particular among Parisian Saint-Simonians. Women freely adopted new life-styles, susciting indignation of the public opinion. They claimed equality of rights and participated to the abundant literary activity, for instance with Claire Démar's Appel au peuple sur l'affranchissement de la femme (1833) feminist pamphlet. On the other hand, Charles Fourier's Utopian Socialist theory of passions advocated "free love." His architectural model of the phalanstère community explicitly took into account women's emancipation.

The Bourbon Restoration re-established the prohibition of divorce in 1816. Then, since 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 proscripted as the other Forty-Eighters.

The Commune

Further information: Paris Commune

Some women organized a feminist movement during the Commune, following on from earlier attempts in 1789 and 1848. Thus, Nathalie Lemel, 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, also was active in the Women's Union. Believing that their struggle against patriarchy could only be followed in the frame of a global struggle against capitalism, the association demanded gender-equality, wages' equality, right of divorce for women, right to secular education and for 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 (obtaining the closing of the maisons de tolérance, or legal official brothels). 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 bakerie 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.

Under the Third Republic

Further information: French Third Republic

Despite some cultural changes following World War I, which had witnessed women replacing men, gone to the front, as workers, 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 claimed the right to vote for women, but did not insist on the access of women to legislative and executive offices . The suffragettes, however, did valorize foreign experiences with women at power, in particular by bringing attention to legislation voted under their influence, concerning alcohol (Prohibition Era in the US), reglementation of prostitution or 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, mostly because of fear concerning the influence of clericalism among them — which echoed the conservative vote of rural areas for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte during the Second Republic.

In 1936, the new President, Léon Blum, included three women in the Popular Front government: Cécile Brunschvicg, Suzanne Lacore and Irène Joliot-Curie . Although Blum's feminism has been subjected to debate , he had defended voting rights' for women, a proposition included in the program of the Socialist 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 adressed his "congratulations" to Blum for this measure , while the conservative newspaper Le Temps wrote, on June 1, 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 anymore women's right to vote, partly because this female vote could advantage them .

Post-war

Women obtained the right to vote only with the Provisional Government of the French Republic (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 by 51 voices against 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 would persist until today. During the baby boom period, feminism became again a minor movement, despite some 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 signed the return to conservative usages . For instance, Lucie Aubrac, who was active in the French Resistance — a role highlighted by Gaullist myths — returned to private life after the war . 33 women managed to be elected at the Liberation, but none entered the government, and the euphory of the Liberation was quickly halted .

A difficult access of women to governmental responsibilities

On the 27 cabinets formed during the Fourth Republic, only 4 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 as Under-State Secretary to Youth and Sports, but remained only seven months in office . The next woman to acceed to governmental responsibilities, Germaine Poinso-Chapuis, was minister from 24 November 1947 to 19 July 1948, in Robert Schuman's cabinet, charged of Health and Population. 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 . 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 in this abandon by Pope Pius XII .

The third woman to acceed 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 charged 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 — quite forgotten today — acceeded 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) and of the baby boom, leading to a strenghtening of familialism and patriarchy. Even left-wing cabinets abstained themselves 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 are issued) became gender-mixed in 1945, only 18 women graduated from it between 1946 and 1956 (against 706 men) .

Of the first eleven cabinets of the Fifth Republic, four did not count any women — in May '68, the cabinet was exclusively male .

May '68 and its aftermaths

A strong feminist movement would only emerged in the aftermaths of May '68, with the creation of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (Women's Liberation Movement, MLF), allegedly by Antoinette Fouquette, 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 occurred during the Fifth Republic — more and more women beginning to work — they advocated the right of autonomy from their husbands, right to contraception and to abortion.

In 1971 the feminist lawyer Gisèle Halimi founded the group Choisir ("To Chose"), to protect the women who had signed the Manifesto of the 343 (Manifeste des 343 salopes, Manifest of the 343 Bitches) 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 formed itself 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."

After the election of the socialist candidate François Mitterrand in 1981, Yvette Roudy passed the 1983 law against sexism.

In 1999, Florence Montreynaud launched the Chiennes de guarde NGO (which could be translated as "Watch-bitches", being a play of word on "Watchdogs" and "female dogs"). Their manifesto was signed by a variety of persons, including the historian Michelle Perrot, the navigator Isabelle Autissier, the journalist Laure Adler, the ethologist Boris Cyrulnik, the bishop Jacques Gaillot, the writer Pascal Bruckner, the sociologists Françoise Héritier and Alain Touraine, the MEP Olivier Duhamel, Geneviève Fraisse and Alain Lipietz, the politicians Yves Cochet, Roselyne Bachot, Véronique Neiertz and Huguette Bouchardeau, and other intellectuals such as Régis Debray, Pierre-André Taguieff and André Comte-Sponteville. It was opposed, however, by the feminist psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco, who criticized the passing of new anti-sexist laws, believing the existing legislation was sufficient.

The creation of the NGO Ni putes, ni soumises (Neither Whores, Nor Submissives) in 2002, related to the conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), was also largely mediatized.

French Feminism

Main article: French Feminism

The Anglo-Saxon world refers to literary works by French feminists of the 1970s as "French Feminism".

Further readings

• 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

See also

• History of the Left in France
• LGBT rights in France