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Proletarians of the Proletariat: Women's Citizenship in France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Christine Bard
Christine Bard
Affiliation:
University of Angers
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Abstract

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Type
Workers and Citizenship in Europe and North America
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 48 , Fall 1995 , pp. 49 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1995

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References

NOTES

See Christine Bard, Les filles de Marianne: Histoire des Féminismes, 1914–1940 (Paris, 1995). Many thanks to F. Blum, S. Chaperon, G. Houbre, M. Ríot-Sarcey, S. Wahnich, and M. Zancarini-Fournel, whose comments on this article were extremely helpful, and especially to F. Thébaud.

1. See Figures 1 and 2 for illustrations from L'Ouvrière, journal of the Communist party, on the subject of votes for women.Google Scholar

2. See Godineau, Dominique, Citoyennes tricoteuses: Les femmes du peuple à Paris pendant la Révolution française (Aix-en-Provence, 1988).Google Scholar In the 1830s, Louise Dauriat noted that these women revolutionaries were not citizens because “one is only a citizen when one exercises political, religious and civil rights.” See Riot-Sarcey, Michèle, La démocratie à l'épreuve des femmes (Paris, 1994), 107.Google Scholar

3. Rosanvallon, Pierre, Lesacre du citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar

4. Fraisse, Geneviève, Muse de la Raison: la démocratie exclusive et la différence des sexes (Aix-en-Provence, 1989).Google ScholarThe question of the “French lag” was raised in a recent colloquium on “La démocratie à la française ou les femmes indésirables: 1793–1993,” University of Paris VII/Columbia University, December 9–11, 1993 (proceedings forthcoming, 1995).Google Scholar

5. In 1911 there were 7,217,000 employed women and 12,879,000 employed men; in 1936 there were 6,542,000 employed women and 12,650,000 employed men. Figures cited in Marchand, Olivier and Thélot, Claude, Deux Siècles de travail en France (Paris, 1991), 68.Google Scholar

6. See Guilbert, Madeleine, Les femmes et l'organisation syndicale avant 1914 (Paris, 1966).Google Scholar

7. See Christine Bard, “A la recherche des diversités féministes dans le Dictionnaire” (unpublished paper, 1993).Google Scholar

8. See Hobsbawm, Eric, “Sexe, symboles, vêtements et socialisme,” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 23 (09 1978): 2–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. See Zylberberg-Hocquard, Marie-Hélène, Féminisme et syndicalisme en France avant 1914 (Paris, 1978);Google Scholar and idem, Femmes et féminisme dans le mouvement ouvrier français (Paris, 1981).

10. Tilly, Louise and Scott, Joan, Les femmes, le travail et la famille (Marseille, 1987), 268.Google Scholar

11. See Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle, “Archéologie de la loi de 1892,” in Le genre de la protection sociale, ed. Auslander, Léora and Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle (Paris, forthcoming). The most radical feminists denounced this law prohibiting women from working nights.Google Scholar

12. See Monatte, Pierre, “La femme dans Ia Fédération du Livre,” La Vie Ouvrière, July 5, 1913.Google Scholar

13. Jennings, Jeremy. “The CGT and the Couriau Affair: Syndicalist Responses to Female Labor in France before 1914,” European History Quarterly 21 (1991):321–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. See Robert, Jean-Louis, “La CGT et Ia famille ouvrière 1914–1918, première approche,” Le Mouvement social 116 (07–09 1981):47–66.Google Scholar See also Rebérioux, Madeleine, “Le mouvement syndical et les femmes jusqu'au Front populaire,” in Le féminisme et ses enjeux (Paris, 1988), 61–87.Google Scholar

15. Sowerwine, Charles, “Workers and Women in France Before 1914: The Debate over the Couriau Affair,” Journal of Modern History 55 (09 1983):411–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. “Une féministe consciente préférera toujours au torche-cul des votard le pessaire occlus,” L'individualité féminine (Paris, 1914), 5.Google Scholar

17. See Louis, Marie-Victoire, Le droit de cuissage: France 1860–1930 (Paris, 1994).Google Scholar

18. See Guerrand, Roger-Henri and Ronsin, Francis, Lesexe apprivoisé: Jeanne Humbert et la lutte pour la contrôle des naissances (Paris, 1990).Google Scholar

19. See Perrot, Michelle. “L'éloge de la ménagère dans le discours des ouvriers français au XIXe siècle.” Romantisme 13–14 (1976): 105–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Frader, Laura Levine. “Working-Class Women and Social Citizenship in Interwar France,” Clio. Histoire, femmes et société (forthcoming, 1996).Google Scholar

21. Sohn, Anne-Marie, “Entre-deux-guerres,” in Histoire des Femmes en Occident, ed. Duby, Georges and Perrot, Michelle, vol. 5, Le XXème siècle, ed. Thébaud, Françoise (Paris, 1992), 112.Google Scholar

22. Le Droit des femmes (September–October 1929):237.Google Scholar

23. Bouvier, Jeanne, Mes mémoires: Une syndicaliste féministe, 1876–1935, ed. Armogathe, Daniel (Paris, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Sohn, Anne-Marie, “Exemplarité et limites de la participation féminine à la vie syndicale: les institutrices de la CGTU,” Revue d'Hisioire moderne et Contemporaine 24 (07–09 1977):391–414.Google Scholar

25. See Vignes, Madeleine, Le Journal des Dames: Féminisme, syndicalisme dans les PTT de 1924 à 1937 (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar

26. Pelletier, Madeleine, a Freemason, was successively (and sometimes simultaneously) an anarchist, Guesdist, Hervéist, Guesdist again, communist, leftist, and then activist for the Parti d'Unité Prolétarienne. She praised feminist autonomy while justifying women's parallel involvement in existing parties.Google Scholar See Sowerwine, Charles and Maignien, Claude, Madeleine Pelletier, une féministe dans l'arène politique (Paris, 1992);Google Scholar and Bard, Christine, ed., Madeleine Pelletier (1874–1939): Logique et infortunes d'un combat pour l'égalité (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar

27. One may wonder about this directive of the Second International, obviously inspired by the German situation where the break between “bourgeois” feminism and a particularly feminist and feminized workers' movement had been well in place since 1889. Things were somewhat different on the other side of the border. Republican, socialist, and humanist ideals brought feminists, socialists, and moderate trade unionists in close proximity. Rapproachement, though possible, never occurred.

28. See the presentation of Sohn, Anne-Marie on Bebel, Auguste, Le femme dans le passé, le présent et l'avenir (Paris, 1979; orig. 1891), I–XXI.Google Scholar

29. Sowerwine, Charles, Les femmes et le socialisme (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar

30. See Reynolds, Siân, “Women, Men and the 1936 Strikes in France,” The French and Spanish Popular Fronts: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Alexandre, Martin S. and Graham, Helen (Cambridge, 1989), 185–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Cited in Le Droit des Femmes, June 1936, 85.Google Scholar

32. Pelletier, Madeleine, “Vote des femmes et service militaire,” La Suffragiste 10 (12 1912).Google Scholar

33. Auclert, Hubertine (1848–1914) is considered to be the first French suffragist. It was she who coined the term “feminist” in 1882.Google Scholar See Hause, Steven C., Hubertine Auclert: The French Suffragette (New Haven, 1987).Google Scholar

34. See Klejman, Laurence and Rochefort, Florence, L'égalité en marche: Le féminisme sous la IlIe République (Paris, 1989).Google Scholar

35. Reprinted in Opinions de femmes: De la veille au lendemain de la Révolution Française, ed. Fraisse, Geneviève (Paris, 1989), 47–62.Google Scholar

36. Auclert, Hubertine, Egalité sociale et politique de la femme et de l'homme (Marseille, n.d.).Google Scholar See the detailed analysis of this by Rebérioux, Madeleine, Dufrancatel, Christiane, and Slama, Béatrice, “Hubertine Auclert et la question des femmes à l'‘immortel congrès’ (1879),” Romantisme 13–14 (1976):47–62.Google Scholar

37. Garrigou, Alain, Le vote ella vertu: Comment les Français sont devenus électeurs (Paris,1992), 97–109.Google Scholar

38. Auclert, , Egalité sociale.Google Scholar

39. Cited in “Les anciens combattants et le vote des femmes,” La Française, June 23, 1934.Google Scholar

40. Valéry, Paul, “Le suffrage des femmes,” La Revue de Paris (February 15, 1931).Google Scholar

41. Bulletin de l'Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes, 1914–1918, 64.Google Scholar

42. La Française, April 1, 1916.Google Scholar

43. Thébaud, Françoise, “Le féminisme à l'épreuve de la guerre,” in La tentation nationaliste 1914–1945, ed. Thalman, Rita (Paris, 1990), 17–46.Google Scholar

44. See Duby, and Perrot, , Histoire des Femmes, vol. 5, 27.Google Scholar

45. Auclert, Hubertine, Le vote des femmes (Paris, 1908).Google Scholar

46. Vérone, Maria, “Du vote des Indigènes au suffrage des femmes,” Le Droit des femmes, February 1937, 17–18.Google Scholar

47. Le Droit des Femmes, March 1935, 77.Google Scholar

48. The debate continues. See Dietz, Mary G., “Citizenship with a Feminist Face: The Problem of Maternal Thinking,” Political Theory 13 (02 1985):19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49. The defense of social citizenship became the orientation favored by feminists in countries such as the United States where equality of political rights had been obtained. See Sarvasy, Wendy, “Beyond the Difference versus Equality Policy Debate: Post Suffrage Feminism, Citizenship, and the Quest for a Feminist Welfare State,” Signs 17 (Winter 1992): 329–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. See Blum, Françoise and Horne, Janet, “Féminisme et Musée social: 1916–1939,” Vie sociale 8–9 (08/09 1986):314–402;Google Scholar and Paul Gradvohl, “Les premières années de l'Association des surintendantes d'usine (1917–1939),” ibid., 377–443.

51. This phrase is that of Eleanor Roosevelt, feminist, pacifist, and nonconformist wife of the president of the United States; it illustrates a sentiment common to most feminists. Cited in Evans, Sara, Les Américaines: Histoire des femmes aux Etats-Unis (Paris, 1991), 294.Google Scholar

52. Bulletin de l'Union française pour le suffrage des femmes, 1918–1919, 27.Google Scholar

53. This way of exalting your maternity is simply another way of keeping you down. You are only something because you have the honor, sometimes, of producing a man, of carrying a son in your belly. As for me, ladies, I am not a wife, I am not a mother, and I declare that I do not consider myself less because of it. I am a woman and that is enough, wrote Deraismes, Maria in 1868 (Eve dans l'humanité, ed. Klejman, Laurence [Paris, 1990], 137).Google ScholarMadeleine Pelletier pushed this logic even further by recommending the “virilization of women” as a means of achieving individuation. See Christine Bard, “L'égalité des sexes et la virilisation des femmes,” in Madeleine Pelletier, 91–108.Google Scholar

54. If all feminists agreed to defend the rights of mothers, especially working mothers (and not excluding the rights of children), the defense or rejection of maternity in theoretical discussions occasioned sharp debate. See Knibiehler, Yvonne and Fouquet, Catherine, Histoire des mères (Paris, 1977);Google Scholar and Thébaud, Françoise, Donner la vie: La maternité en France dans l'entre-deux-guerres (Lyon, 1986).Google Scholar

55. The chapter of my dissertation devoted to this subject owes much to the problems posed by Thalmann, Rita in Etre femme sons le IIlème Reich (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar Under the circumstances the responsibility of women as subjects of history must be recognized, even when they are only “passive” or second-class citizens. Koonz, Claudia in Mothers in the Fatherland:Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1986) also takes this approach.Google Scholar

56. This was true for the feminists but generally for a large number of other women as well. See Thébaud, Françoise, La femme au temps de la guerre de 14 (Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

57. Marc Bloch argued: “I will not make an exception for women, save only young mothers whose survival is essential for their children. They are absolutely right and I do not see how their courage is less natural, or less obligatory, than our own. L'Etrange défaite: Témoignage écrit en 1940 (Paris, 1990), 164.Google Scholar

58. Julliard, Jacques, Autonomie ouvrière: Etudes sur le syndicalisme d'action directe (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar

59. Mossuz-Lavau, Janine and Sineau, Mariette, Enquête sur les femmes et la politique en France (Paris, 1983);Google ScholarSineau, Mariette, Des femmes en politique (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar

60. See Picq, Françoise, Libération des femmes: Les années-mouvement (Paris, 1993).Google Scholar

61. See Gaspard, Françoise, Servan-Schreiber, Claude, and Le Gall, Anne, Au pouvoir, citoyennes!: Liberté, égalité, parité (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar Note that both Hubertine Auclert and Monette Thomas, a social activist who was a member of the Comité d'Action Suffragiste, were already demanding parity for women in elected assemblies at the beginning of the century.