Feminism in France refers to the history of
feminist thought and movements in France.
Feminism in France can be roughly divided
into three waves: First-wave feminism, which
largely concerned itself with obtaining suffrage
and civic rights for women, spanning from
the French Revolution through the Second Republic
and Third Republic, with significant contributions
stemming from the revolutionary movements
of the French Revolution of 1848 and Paris
Commune, culminating in winning the right
to vote in 1944.
Second-wave feminism spanned from the 1940s
until the 1990s, and came about as a reevaluation
of women's role in society, reconciling the
inferior treatment of women in society despite
their ostensibly equal political status to
men.
Pioneered by theorists such as Simone de Beauvoir,
second wave feminism was an important current
within the social turmoil leading up to and
following the May 1968 events in France, and
political goals included the guarantee of
increased bodily autonomy for women, particularly
as enabled through increased access to abortion
and birth control.
Third-wave feminism spans from the early 2000s
onwards, and continues the legacy of the second
wave while adding in elements of postcolonial
critique, approaching women's rights in tandem
with other ongoing discourses, particularly
those surrounding racism.
== First-wave feminism ==
=== The French Revolution ===
In November 1789, at the very beginning of
the French Revolution, the Women's Petition
was addressed to the National Assembly 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 Both 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, Thérésa Cabarrús,
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 guillotined 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.
=== From the Restoration to the Second Republic
===
The feminist movement expanded again in Socialist
movements of the Romantic generation, in particular
among Parisian 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.
=== The Commune and the Union des Femmes ===
Some women organized a feminist movement during
the Commune, following up on earlier attempts
in 1789 and 1848.
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, 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 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 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.
=== The suffragettes ===
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, 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.
After the 1936 Popular Front victory, although
he had defended voting rights for women (a
proposition included in the program of the
French Section of the Workers' International
party since 1906), left-wing Prime Minister
Léon Blum did not implement the measure,
because of the fear of the Radical-Socialist
Party.Women obtained the right to vote only
after the Provisional Government of the French
Republic (GPRF) confirmed, on 5 October 1944,
the ordinance of 21 April 1944 of the French
Committee of National Liberation.
Following the November 1946 elections, the
first in which women were permitted to vote,
sociologist Robert Verdier refuted any voting
gender gap: in May 1947 in Le Populaire, he
showed that women do not vote in a consistent
way but divide themselves, as men, according
to social classes.
=== Other rights for women ===
Olga Petit, born Scheina Lea-Balachowsky and
also referred to as Sonia Olga Balachowsky-Petit,
became the first female lawyer in France on
6 December 1900.Marital power (puissance maritale)
was abolished in 1938.
However, the legal repeal of the specific
doctrine of marital power does not necessarily
grant married women the same legal rights
as their husbands (or as unmarried women)
as was notably the case in France, where the
legal subordination of the wife (primarily
coming from the Napoleonic Code) was gradually
abolished with women obtaining full equality
in marriage only in the 1980s.
== Second-wave feminism ==
=== Post-war period ===
Women were not allowed to become judges in
France until 1946.During the baby boom period,
feminism became a minor movement, despite
forerunners such as Simone de Beauvoir, who
published The Second Sex in 1949.The Second
Sex is 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, de Beauvoir 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.Married
French women obtained the right to work without
their husband's consent in 1965.
The Neuwirth Law legalized birth control in
1967, but the relative executive decrees were
blocked for a couple years by the conservative
government.
=== 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 Fouque, 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.
The paternal authority of a man over his family
in France was ended in 1970 (before that parental
responsibilities belonged solely to the father
who made all legal decisions concerning the
children).From 1970, the procedures for the
use of the title "Mademoiselle" were challenged
in France, particularly by feminist groups
who wanted it banned.
A circular from François Fillon, then Prime
Minister, dated 21 February 2012, called for
the deletion of the word "Mademoiselle" in
all official documents.
On 26 December 2012, the Council of State
approved the deletion.In 1971, the feminist
lawyer Gisèle Halimi founded the group Choisir
("To Choose"), to protect the women who had
signed "Le Manifeste des 343 Salopes" (in
English "Manifesto of the 343 Sluts" or alternately
"Manifesto of the 343 Bitches"), written by
Simone de Beauvoir.
This provocative title became popular after
Cabu's drawing on a satirical journal with
the caption: « Who got those 343 whores pregnant?
»); the women were admitting to have had
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.
The Manifesto was the inspiration for a February
3, 1973, manifesto by 331 doctors declaring
their support for abortion rights:
We want freedom of abortion.
It is entirely the woman's decision.
We reject any entity that forces her to defend
herself, perpetuates an atmosphere of guilt,
and allows underground abortions to persist
....
Choisir had transformed into a clearly reformist
body in 1972, and their 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 "ecofeminism."
In the 1970s, French feminist theorists 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.A
new reform in France in 1985 abolished the
stipulation that the father had the sole power
to administer the children's property.In 1999,
Florence Montreynaud launched the Chiennes
de garde NGO.
=== French feminist theory ===
In the English-speaking world, 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 its English-speaking,
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".Notable representatives include Monique
Wittig Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia
Kristeva and Bracha Ettinger.The term includes
writers who are not French, but who have worked
substantially in France and the French tradition.
== Third-wave feminism ==
In the 2000s, some feminist groups such as
Ni putes, ni soumises (Neither Whores, Nor
Submissives) denounced an increased influence
of Islamic extremism in poor suburbs of large
immigrant population, claiming they may be
pressured into wearing veils, leaving school,
and marrying early.
On the other hand, a "third wave" of the feminist
movement arose, combining the issues of sexism
and racism, protesting the perceived Islamophobic
instrumentalization of feminism by the French
Right.
After Ni Putes Ni Soumises activists were
received by Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin
and their message incorporated into the official
celebrations of Bastille Day 2003 in Paris,
various left-wing authors (Sylvie Tissot,
Elsa Dorlin, Étienne Balibar, Houria Bouteldja,
etc.) as well as NGOs such as Les Blédardes
(led by Bouteldja), criticized the racist
stigmatization of immigrant populations, whose
cultures are depicted as inherently sexist.
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.
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.They claimed that Ni Putes Ni Soumises
overshadowed the work of other feminist NGOs.
After the nomination of its leader Fadela
Amara to the government by Nicolas Sarkozy,
Sylvie Tissot denounced a "state feminism"
(an instrumentalization of feminism by state
authorities) while Bouteldja qualified the
NGO as an Ideological State Apparatus (AIE).In
January 2007, the collective of the Féministes
indigènes launched a manifesto in honour
of the Mulatress Solitude.
The Mulatress Solitude 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.
== Difficult access to government office for
women ==
A few women held public office 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.
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.
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 former President Nicolas
Sarkozy, would mark the culmination of this
current.
=== 1945–1974 ===
Of the 27 cabinets formed during the Fourth
Republic, 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 undersecretary of Youth and Sports.
However, she remained in office for only seven
months.
The next woman to hold government office,
Germaine Poinso-Chapuis, was health and education
minister 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 hold government
office would be the Radical-Socialist Jacqueline
Thome-Patenôtre, appointed undersecretary
of Reconstruction and Lodging in Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury's
cabinet in 1957.
Nafissa Sid Cara then participated in the
government as undersecretary 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 undersecretary
between 1968 and 1974.
Finally, Suzanne Ploux was undersecretary
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.
=== 1974–1981 ===
In 1974, 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.
=== From the 1980s to today ===
After the election 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.
It was opposed by feminist historian and psychoanalyst
Elisabeth Roudinesco, who believed the existing
legislation was sufficient.
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.Joan
Scott, a professor at the Institute for Advanced
Study, stated: "There is a longstanding commitment
to the notion that the French do gender relations
differently — especially from prudish Americans
— and that has to do with the French understanding
of seduction.
Seduction is the alternative to thinking about
[sexual harassment] as sexual harassment."
Christine Bard, a professor at the University
of Angers, echoed those thoughts, saying that
there is an "idealization of seduction à
la Française, and that anti-feminism has
become almost part of the national identity"
in France.Sexual harassment in the workplace
was made subject to legal sanction in France
starting only in 1992.
The reach of those laws was not matched by
vigorous enforcement, labor lawyers say.
France's "reluctance to move more aggressively
against sexual harassment reflects deeply
rooted ideas about sexual relations and the
relative power between men and women", said
Scott.
== See also ==
Écriture féminine
French structuralist feminism
History of the Left in France
LGBT rights in France
Protests of 1968
State feminism
Marie-Laure Sauty de Chalon
== 
References ==
== 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.
