Women's suffrage in France

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Original edition of Hubertine Auclert's book Le vote des femmes ( Women's suffrage of 1908)

The women's suffrage in France was in the Second World War reached on 21 April 1944. This happened late in comparison to other European countries such as Germany , Luxembourg or the Netherlands , where women already since the end of World War I were entitled to vote. In the period between the First and Second World War, a law passed by the National Assembly on women's suffrage was blocked several times in the conservative Senate . National crises and revolutions favored the advocacy of women's suffrage. Among other things, Catholicism in France was one reason for the late introduction of women's suffrage. Under Pope Pius X , French Catholics followed their Pope and opposed women's suffrage; as Pope Benedict XV. gave up the resistance to the participation of women in political life, paradoxically this damaged women's suffrage in France: the politicians from the radical camp feared an increasing influence of the church through the introduction of women's suffrage. Through the progressive Catholic party founded by Georges Bidault , the Mouvement républicain populaire , the Catholic wing became significantly more liberal. Ultimately, the women's suffrage movement of Catholic women in France won more supporters for the movement than all other groups combined. Militant Parisian feminists had brought the movement into being and laid the intellectual foundations, but it was only the Catholic women's suffrage movement that succeeded in conquering the provinces.

19th century

The women's rights activist Hubertine Auclert; 1910

The Code Napoleon of 1804 put French customary law and Roman family law into writing. He made the family an image of the nation with Napoleon at its head: a kind of dictatorship with a husband at its head. Women lost control of family property and children, and suffered from strict rules of marriage and divorce. The wife was under the tutelage of her husband, was obliged to obey him and was not authorized to enter into contracts or otherwise appear as a legal subject without him. The restoration of the monarchy led to legal measures that emphasized the value of the family; For example, newly married men were exempt from military service.

But the ideals of the revolution were not forgotten, and when the monarchy fell in 1848, the temporary government proclaimed universal suffrage on March 5, 1848, with no restrictions on property. However, this formulation did not aim to include women. However, a group of Parisian women, the Committee for Women's Rights , immediately began campaigning for women's suffrage and other rights for women. The left did not support them because they believed that women were too poorly educated and too much under the influence of the clergy to make their own choice.

From an international perspective, it is understandable why the early acquisition of universal suffrage for men brought disadvantages for the introduction of women's suffrage: in other countries, parallel to the expansion of the initially restricted suffrage for men, the call for the introduction of women's suffrage was always raised according to. In France, on the other hand, men were given the right to vote very early without restrictions, and this crippled the advocacy of women's suffrage.

In the first election on April 23, 1848, a moderate and conservative National Assembly was elected. The latter soon passed a law that banned women from membership in political clubs and associations. Thereupon, for example, Jeanne Deroin , co-founder of the Club de l'Emancipation de Femmes and Pauline Rolland , founder of a socialist teachers' association, were each sentenced to six months in prison in 1850.

National crises and revolutions spurred the advocacy of women's suffrage. This had been the case in both the French Revolution after 1789 and the Revolution of 1848, and it was repeated in 1870 after France's defeat by Prussia, the Paris Commune . The ground was already prepared for feminism: The Société pour la Revendication des Droits de la Femme (Society for the Demand of Women's Rights) was founded and in 1869 the French translation of John Stuart Mill's The Slavery of Women was published . Julie-Victoire Doubié called in her writings for the introduction of women's suffrage for unmarried women. However, this formulation did not aim to include women. In general, radical women at the time did not advocate women's suffrage because they believed it would strengthen the conservative side and harm Republican thought. Women like Maria Deraismes campaigned for better education for girls, for economic independence for women and for reform of divorce law; in these areas progress was made in the last quarter of the 19th century. Resistance to the demand to put women's suffrage at the center of efforts led to differences of opinion, so that in 1889 a conference on women's rights did not even put the topic on the agenda.

The radical Hubertine Auclert founded the Société le suffrage des femmes in 1883 out of disappointment with this situation . She was the first women's rights activist to call herself a féministe ( feminist ) in 1882 . Auclert advocated women's suffrage and full legal equality for women.

The reasons for the slow progress were diverse: former supporters switched to the conservatives and male politicians could not be convinced that women’s right to vote would bring them advantages. As in other states, it was difficult for women from the bourgeoisie to get their working-class colleagues enthusiastic about women's suffrage. Although the socialists spoke out in favor of women's suffrage from the mid-1880s onwards, they regarded the matter as secondary to their grand goals: it would take care of itself once a fair model of society was achieved.

20th century

Madeleine Pelletier, doctor , psychiatrist , one of the most influential French feminists and socialists before Simone de Beauvoir .

Often the municipal right to vote was granted to women before the national right to vote and was therefore a pioneer. In France, however, women were only allowed to vote in a few municipalities and cities. Legislative initiatives on municipal women's suffrage were introduced in 1901 and 1906, but they went under. The slow progress in the 20th century meant that the demands of French women became louder and some of them radicalized. The influence of the British suffragettes contributed to this; Christabel Pankhurst lived in Paris since 1912. In 1904, Hubertine Auclert and a group of women supporters interrupted a session of the Chamber of Deputies and tore up a copy of the Civil Code to draw attention to the fact that the code had been in force for 100 years, but that women's suffrage was still in the stars. Madeleine Pelletier interrupted a banquet to mark the centenary of the Civil Code, and both she and Hubertine Auclert demonstrated at polling stations in 1908. But her militant tactics were not successful with her fellow campaigners or in public.

In the second half of the 19th century, the Catholic women's movement "Le féminisme chrétien" was founded in France , its leader was the French Marie Maugeret (1844–1928). She was strictly Catholic and anti-Semitic. As a wealthy heiress, she was of the opinion that the term femist should not be left to the Republicans and free thinkers alone. Consistent with the views of Carrie Chapman Catt , she believed that it was a scandal that uneducated coal workers were allowed to vote, but not wealthy, educated women. She held an annual congress in celebration of Joan of Arc . In 1906 she succeeded in launching a legislative initiative for women's suffrage. She was accompanied by one of her fiery speeches in which she called on women to purge politics. As a result, Pope Pius X's rejection of women's suffrage dampened . Marie Maugeret's commitment and her push for women's suffrage at the Jeanne d'Arc Congress in 1910 did not receive a majority.

Following the example of other states, a French association for women's suffrage was founded in 1909, the Union Française pour le Suffrge des Femmes . Membership quickly reached 3,000 and in 1914 12,000. In 1914, they took part in a trial election organized by the daily Le Journal , which garnered more than half a million votes for women.

The Republicans rejected women's suffrage because of the anti-clerical attitudes that prevailed there, as they were not prepared to get the Catholics in the right wing more votes. Thus, anti-clericalism hindered the introduction of women's suffrage. But his female advocates did not woo the Catholic politicians either, who might have agreed to women's suffrage for tactical reasons; the leaders of the feminists were Protestants and knew about the negative impact of the Church on the lives of women.

A parliamentary committee led by Ferdinand Buisson , a proponent of women's suffrage, made a push to introduce local women's suffrage, but parliament refused to even consider it until mid-1913. On July 5, 1914, a women's suffrage meeting was held, commemorating the father of women's suffrage, the Marquis de Condorcet , and supporting Buisson's proposal.

First World War and the time between the two world wars

As in other countries, the First World War interrupted efforts to introduce women's suffrage in France. The commitment of women in the war was honored here, but did not lead to women's suffrage. Rather, it was the new Pope Benedict XV , who succeeded Pius X in 1914, who brought about a change: He softened the resistance to women's suffrage so that the Catholic opponents of women's suffrage could no longer invoke the position of the church authorities. On May 20, 1919 , the members of the National Assembly voted 329 to 95 in favor of women's suffrage, 104 parliamentarians abstained. However, this law did not find a majority in the Senate ; not even the widows of the fallen were given the right to vote. Feminists have not been admitted by the Senate to defend women's suffrage and a well-known opponent, Alexandre Bérard , has been tasked with drafting the report. The document contained fourteen counter-arguments against women's suffrage, including the assertion that women were used in war out of patriotism, not with regard to a reward through the right to vote and would be subsequently devalued by such.

In the period between the First and Second World War, it was repeated several times that a law on women's suffrage passed by the National Assembly was blocked in the Senate: In July 1927, the municipal women's suffrage, passed by the National Assembly with 396 to 24 votes, was about 1936 Complete political equality between women and men, against which not a single vote against was cast in the National Assembly. In the Senate of the Third French Republic , which existed between 1870 and 1940, there never were detailed debates about a women's suffrage law, as these were always thrown out in advance or the discussions were exhausted in arguments about the fundamentals. For example, MPs who wanted to appear progressive could vote in favor of women's suffrage there without risk, because they knew that this would have no political consequences. Historian James F. McMillan sees the Senate's behavior as a sign of the torpor that had befallen the Third Republic in the 1930s. The reason was the fear that women's suffrage would help the church regain power.

Thus the Conservatives opposed women's suffrage, while the Left remained inactive. The feminists were isolated and had little influence: they neither made efforts to inspire the many women outside the movement to vote for women's suffrage, nor did they, like Auclert or Pelletier, take radical measures, nor did they want to learn to move and get involved in the political arena this way to gain allies. The opponents of women's suffrage feared that, because of the surplus of women after the First World War, the political balance would shift if women got a vote. Some men feared that with women's suffrage, the position of the women's suffrage movement against alcoholism and prostitution would gain influence. Catholics rejected the idea of ​​individualization and emancipation as false dogmas that came from international Freemasonry . For a long time the Catholic Church had rejected women's suffrage, and when it gave up the resistance, this paradoxically damaged women's suffrage: the politicians from the radical camp feared the increasing influence of the church through the introduction of women's suffrage.

1940s: The Road to Women's Suffrage

In France too, women's suffrage was achieved at a time of great national crisis, after the occupation and the end of the Third Republic at the end of World War II. After the Allies landed in North Africa in 1942, the Free France Committee (France libre) moved its headquarters to Algiers . Women's suffrage is one of the goals of the movement. Georges Bidault played a major role in the debates. Even here the radicals maintained their resistance, but when France was liberated in 1944 and the debates continued on French soil, the radicals were in the minority. Bidault became president of the National Council of Resistance , which from 1943 coordinated and directed the various movements and groups of the Resistance, the press, the trade unions and members of political parties that opposed the Vichy regime and the German occupation. In this position he had a major influence on the reform program that was supposed to bring human rights back into force after the war.

In January 1944, the introduction of women's suffrage was initiated and made more concrete in March. On April 21, 1944, the general active and passive right to vote for women was introduced by ordinance. The left and the Catholics were in favor, the radicals against, but in the minority. In a referendum in October 1945, in which women were entitled to vote for the first time, 96 percent of the population spoke out against the continuation of the Third Republic, which had so failed in the 1930s. Also in October 1945 an assembly was tasked with drafting a new constitution; and, as is so often the case, part of the population was deprived of the right to vote while another got it: some 100,000 collaborators lost their civil rights, including the right to vote. The parliament , also elected in October 1945, consisted almost half of socialists and communists, while the conservative and anti-clerical radicals fell below 10 percent of the vote. The biggest surprise was the success of a progressive Catholic party founded by Georges Bidault, the Mouvement républicain populaire . It had emerged from a group of Catholic intellectuals at the end of the war and received 24% of the vote.

This party made the Catholic wing much more liberal. Thus women could vote for a Catholic party without strengthening the conservative forces. The radicals, on the other hand, who had blocked the reform process of women's suffrage for so long, had suffered a great loss of reputation by sticking to the Third Republic. Thus, the women's suffrage movement of Catholic women in France gained more supporters for the movement than any other group combined. Although the militant Parisian feminists had brought the movement into being and laid the spiritual foundations, the Catholic women's suffrage movement managed to conquer the provinces.

In October 1945 women sat in the national parliament for the first time. 33 women were elected.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 291.
  2. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 292.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 293.
  4. ^ A b Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz, Ruth Rubio-Marín: Introduction: Transition to Modernity, the Conquest of Female Suffrage and Women's Citizenship. In: Blanca Rodríguez-Ruiz, Ruth Rubio-Marín: The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe. Voting to Become Citizens. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and Boston 2012, ISBN 978-90-04-22425-4 , pp. 1-46, p. 46.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 294.
  6. ^ Christiane Streubel: Radical Nationalists. Agitation and programs of right-wing women in the Weimar Republic. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-593-38210-5 , p. 63. (History and Gender Series, Volume 55)
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 295.
  8. ↑ Le chrétiennes féministes Féminisme chrétien
  9. ↑ Marie Maugeret Marie Maugeret
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 296.
  11. ↑ a b c d e Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 297.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 298.
  13. ↑ a b Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 299.
  14. ↑ a b c d e f g Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 300.
  15. ↑ June Hannam, Mitzi Auchterlonie, Katherine Holden: International Encyclopedia of Women's Suffrage. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford 2000, ISBN 1-57607-064-6 , p. 105.
  16. ^ Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 134.
  17. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 301.
  18. ^ Mart Martin: The Almanac of Women and Minorities in World Politics. Westview Press Boulder, Colorado, 2000, pp. 136/137.
  19. ↑ - New Parline: the IPU's Open Data Platform (beta). In: data.ipu.org. Retrieved October 1, 2018 .