Feminism in France

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Feminism in France is the history of feminist thought and movements in France. Feminism in France can be roughly divided into three waves: First-wave feminism from the French Revolution through the Third Republic which was concerned chiefly with suffrage and civic rights for women. Significant contributions came from revolutionary movements of the French Revolution of 1848 and Paris Commune, culminating in 1944 when women gained the right to vote.

bodily autonomy for women via increased access to abortion and birth control
.

Third-wave feminism since the 2000s continues the legacy of the second wave while adding elements of postcolonial feminism, approaching women's rights in tandem with other ongoing discourses, particularly those surrounding racism.

First-wave feminism

First page of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen

The French Revolution

In November 1789, at the very beginning of the French Revolution, the

Condorcet
was a notable exception who advocated equal rights for both sexes.

The

Girondins
.

In February 1793,

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",[1]
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

phalanstery
community explicitly took into account women's emancipation.

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
.

Belle Époque Era

During the culturally thriving times of the Belle Époque, especially in the late nineteenth century, feminism and the view of femininity experienced substantial shifts evident through acts by women of boldness and rejection of previous stigmas.[2] The most defining characteristic of this period shown by these actions is the power of choice women began to take hold of.[3] Such acts included these women partaking in nonstandard ways of marriage—as divorce during this time had been legally reinstalled as a result of the Naquet Laws[4]—practicing gender role-defying jobs, and profoundly influencing societal ideologies regarding femininity through writings.[2]

Feminist newspapers quickly became more widespread and took a role in transforming both the view of women and their rights.[2] As this era held promise of equality, proceeding after the French Revolution, women still had yet to gain the title of equal citizens,[5] making it a difficult and dangerous venture to publicize opinions promoting the advancement of women's rights. Among these newspapers, the most notable is Marguerite Durand's La Fronde,[6] run entirely by women.[4]

The Commune and the Union des Femmes

Louise Michel

Some women organized a feminist movement during the Commune, following up on earlier attempts in 1789 and 1848.

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.

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.[8]

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

right to vote
in France.

Despite some cultural changes following

La Garçonne (The Flapper, 1922), depicting an emancipated woman, was seen as scandalous and caused him to lose his Legion of Honour
.

During the

right to vote for women, but did not insist on the access of women to legislative and executive offices.[9] 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.[9]

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

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.[9]

Women obtained the

Le Populaire, he showed that women do not vote in a consistent way but divide themselves, as men, according to social classes.[9]

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.[10][11][12]

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.[13]

Second-wave feminism

De Beauvoir's treatise Le Deuxième Sexe was the starting point of second-wave feminism.

War years

The

zone occupée and the Union des femmes de France in the zone libre. The leaders were Josette Dumeix [fr], then Maria Rabaté for the northern zone, after the arrest of Danielle Casanova and Marcelle Barjonet.[15] and Simone Bertrand[16] in the zone libre.[17]

Post-war period

Women were not allowed to become judges in France until 1946.[12]

During the

baby boom period, feminism became a minor movement, despite forerunners such as Simone de Beauvoir, who published The Second Sex in 1949.[9]

The Second Sex is a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. It sets out a

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.[18] 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.[18]

Married French women obtained the right to work without their husband's consent in 1965.[19] The Neuwirth Law legalized birth control in 1967, but the relative executive decrees were blocked for a couple years by the conservative government.[20]

May 1968 and its aftermath

A strong feminist movement would only emerge in the aftermath of

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).[21]

From 1970, the procedures for the use of the title "

Council of State approved the deletion.[22]

In 1971, the feminist lawyer

Le Nouvel Observateur
on 5 April 1971. The Manifesto was the inspiration for a 3 February 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 ....[24]

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."

Bracha Ettinger has influenced literary criticism, art history and film theory.[26][27][28]

A new reform in France in 1985 abolished the stipulation that the father had the sole power to administer the children's property.[21]

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 theories and philosophies by and about women that emerged in the 1970s to the 1990s. These ideas have run parallel to and sometimes in contradistinction to the political feminist movement in France but is often referred to as "French feminist theory," distinguished by an approach which is more philosophical and literary.[29] Its writings tend to be effusive and metaphorical being less concerned with political doctrine and generally focused on theories of "the body".[30]

Notable representatives include

Bracha Ettinger.[34][35][36][37]

The term includes writers who are not French, but who have worked substantially in France and the French tradition.[38]

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.[39] 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

left-wing authors (Sylvie Tissot,[40] Elsa Dorlin,[41] Étienne Balibar,[42] Houria Bouteldja,[43] 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.[40][41] 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.[40]

They claimed that Ni Putes Ni Soumises overshadowed the work of other feminist NGOs. After the nomination of its leader

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

separatism, refusing to allow others (males or whites) to speak in their names.[45]

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.[9] 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.

Gaullist myths—returned to private life after the war.[9] Thirty-three women were elected at the Liberation, but none entered the government, and the euphoria of the Liberation was quickly halted.[9]

Women retained a low profile during the

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

confidence motion on the subject. Germaine Poinso-Chapuis did not pursue her political career, encouraged to abandon it by Pope Pius XII.[9]

The third woman to hold government office would be the Radical-Socialist

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.[9] 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).[9]

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.[9]

1974–1981

In 1974,

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.[9]

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

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.[9]

From the 1980s to today

After 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.

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.[citation needed] 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.[46]

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."[47] 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.[47]

International Women's Day march in Paris, 8 March 2020[48]

In 1990, following a case where a man had tortured and raped his wife, the Court of Cassation authorized prosecution of spouses for rape or sexual assault. In 1992, the Court of Cassation convicted a man of the rape of his wife, stating that the presumption that spouses have consented to sexual acts that occur within marriage is only valid when the contrary is not proven.[49] Until 1994, France kept in the French Penal Code the article from 1810 that exonerated a rapist if they later married their victim, and in 1994 Law 94-89 criminalized all marital rape.

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.[47] 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.[47]

France outlawed street sexual harassment in 2018, passing a law declaring catcalling on streets and public transportation is subject to fines of up to €750, with more for more aggressive and physical behavior. The law also declared that sex between an adult and a person of 15 or under can be considered rape if the younger person is judged incompetent to give consent.[50][51] It also gives underage victims of rape an extra decade to file complaints, extending the deadline to 30 years from their turning 18.[51]

See also

References

  1. ^ Daniel Guérin, La lutte des classes, 1946 (in French)
  2. ^ a b c Roberts, Mary Louise (2002). Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siecle France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  3. – via JSTOR.
  4. ^ a b Mesch, Rachel (Winter 2012). "A New Man for the New Woman? Men, Marriage, and Feminism in the Belle Epoque". Historical Reflections. 38: 85–106 – via JSTOR.
  5. ^ Holmes, Diana and Carrie Tarr. "Introduction." In A 'Belle Époque'?: Women in French Society and Culture 1890-1914, edited by Diana Holmes and Carrie Tarr, 23-36. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.
  6. ^ Allison, Maggie. "Marguerite Durand and La Fronde: Voicing Women of the Belle Epoque." In A 'Belle Époque'?: Women in French Society and Culture 1890-1914, edited by Diana Holmes and Carrie Tarr, 23-36. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.
  7. ^ Women and the Commune Archived 12 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine, in L'Humanité, 19 March 2005 (in French)
  8. ^ a b c François Bodinaux, Dominique Plasman, Michèle Ribourdouille. "On les disait 'pétroleuses'... Archived 26 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine" (in French)
  9. ^
    Histoire@Politique
    , n°1, May–June 2007 (in French)
  10. ^ "Did you know?" (in French). Archived from the original on 10 September 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  11. ^ Piau, Dominique (2013). "Jeanne Chauvin, éternelle deuxième … authentique pionnière…". UJA – Union des Jeunes Avocats de Paris. Archived from the original on 11 May 2015. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
  12. ^ a b Buchanan, Kelly (6 March 2015). "Women in History: Lawyers and Judges | In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress". Blogs.loc.gov. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
  13. ^ Although marital power was abolished in France in 1938, married women in France obtained the right to work without their husbands' permission only in 1965, "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) and the paternal authority of a man over his family was ended in 1970 (before that parental responsibilities belonged solely to the father who made all legal decisions concerning the children). Furthermore, it was only in 1985 that a legal reform abolished the stipulation that the husband had the sole power to administer the children's property. [1]
  14. ^ Guéraiche 1999.
  15. ^ Loiseau & Pennetier 2023.
  16. ^ Girault & Loiseau 2023.
  17. ^ Sapiro 2004.
  18. ^ .
  19. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 April 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  20. ISSN 1950-6244
    . Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  21. ^ a b Chris Collette (September 2014). "France parental responsibilities" (PDF). ceflonline.net. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  22. ^ "Jurisprudence -Le Conseil d'État valide la suppression du " Mademoiselle " dans les documents administratifs | service-public.fr". service-public.fr.
  23. Nouvel Observateur
    's website.
  24. ^ Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, "Histoire(s) du MLAC (1973-1975)", Clio, numéro 18-2003, Mixité et coéducation, [En ligne], mis en ligne le 04 décembre 2006. URL : http://clio.revues.org/index624.html. Consulté le 19 décembre 2008.
  25. ^ .
  26. .
  27. ^ Carol Armstrong and Catherine de Zegher, 'Women Artists as the Millennium'. Cambridge Massachusetts: October Books, MIT Press, 2006. 35-83. ISBN.
  28. .
  29. .
  30. .
  31. ^ Balén, Julia. In Memoriam: Monique Wittig, The Women's Review of Books, January 2004, Vol. XXI, No. 4., quoted in Trivia Magazine, Wittig Obituary. Archived 2008-06-19 at the Wayback Machine
  32. ^ a b c Kelly Ives, Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva: The Jouissance of French Feminism, Crescent Moon Publishing, 2016.
  33. ^ Griselda Pollock, "To Inscribe in the Feminine". Parallax 8:81-118, 1998.
  34. ^ Griselda Pollock, Introduction, In: Bracha L. Ettinger, Regard et espace-de-bord matrixiels. Brussels: La Lettre Volée, 1999:7-40.
  35. ^ Roy Boyne (ed.), Special Issue: Bracha L. Ettinger. Theory, Culture & Society. Vol. 21 (1), 2004. Texts by Lone Bertelsen, Roy Boyne, B. L. E., Jean-François Lyotard, Griselda Pollock and Couze Venn.
  36. ^ Noreen Giffney, Anne Mulhall and Michael O’Rourke, Seduction into Reading: Bracha L. Ettinger’s The Matrixial Borderspace. Studies in the Maternal, 1 (2) 2009.
  37. ^ Griselda Pollock, To Inscribe in the Feminine. Parallax 8:81-118, 1998.
  38. JSTOR 2929898
  39. ^ Dumeil, Annie; Edmiston, William F. (23 January 2011). La France Contemporaine.
  40. ^ a b c d Sylvie Tissot, Bilan d’un féminisme d’État, in Plein Droit n°75, December 2007
  41. ^ a b Elsa Dorlin (professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne, member of NextGenderation), "Pas en notre nom !" – Contre la récupération raciste du féminisme par la droite française Archived 17 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine (Not in our names! Against the Racist Recuperation of Feminism by the French Right), L'Autre Campagne (in French)
  42. ^ Étienne Balibar, Uprising in the "banlieues", Conference at the University of Chicago, 10 May 2006 (in English) (published in French in Lignes, November 2006)
  43. ^ a b Houria Bouteldja, De la cérémonie du dévoilement à Alger (1958) à Ni Putes Ni Soumises: l’instrumentalisation coloniale et néo-coloniale de la cause des femmes., Ni putes ni soumises, un appareil idéologique d’État, June 2007 (in French)
  44. ^ Appel des Féministes Indigènes, Sous le Haut Marrainage de Solitude, héroïne de la révolte des esclaves guadeloupéens contre le rétablissement de l’esclavage par Napoléon Archived 27 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine (in French)
  45. ^ French: Le féminisme occidental n’a pas le monopole de la résistance à la domination masculine, Appel des Féministes Indigènes, Sous le Haut Marrainage de Solitude, héroïne de la révolte des esclaves guadeloupéens contre le rétablissement de l’esclavage par Napoléon Archived 27 March 2008 at the Wayback Machine (in French)
  46. ^ "Royal demands French vote re-run". BBC News. 22 November 2008. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  47. ^ a b c d Rubin, Alissa J. (19 November 2017). "'Revolt' in France Against Sexual Harassment Hits Cultural Resistance". The New York Times.
  48. ^ "International Women's Day Marked Across the World". VOA News. 8 March 2020.
  49. .
  50. ^ "In France, Catcalling Is Now Illegal". Vogue. 3 August 2018.
  51. ^ a b "France outlaws lewd cat-calls to women in public amid attack uproar". Reuters. 2 August 2018.

Works cited

Further reading

  • Marie Cerati, Le club des citoyennes républicaines révolutionnaires, Paris, éd. sociales, 1966
  • Carolyn Eichner, Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune, Indiana University Press, 2004
  • Eric Fassin, Clarisse Fabre, Liberté, égalité, sexualités, Belfond 2003.
  • Lisa Greenwald, Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2018)
  • M. Jaspard, Enquête sur les violences faites aux femmes, La documentation française, 2002.
  • Bibia Pavard, Florence Rochefort, Michelle Zancarini-Fournel: Ne nous libérez pas, on s'en charge - Une histoire des féminismes de 1789 à nos jours, Paris: La Découverte 2020
  • Marc de Villiers, Histoire des clubs de femmes et des légions d’Amazones (1793-1848-1871), Paris, Plon-Nourrit et cie, 1910