Marie Poplin

Marie Poplin

Marie Popelin (born on September 17, 1846 in Schaerbeek / Schaarbeek ; died on June 5, 1913 in Ixelles / Elsene ) was a Belgian women's rights activist and Belgium's first lawyer, although she was never allowed to practice.

Life

She was the eldest daughter of a middle-class family with four children. From 1865 she worked as a teacher at an École moyenne , later from 1870 to 1875 together with her sister and the feminist Isabelle Gatti de Gamond (1839-1905) at another school. After a dispute with Gatti, the sisters finally founded a girls' school in Mons in 1876 . In 1882 Popelin became principal of another school in Laeken / Laken , but lost this position in 1883 "for administrative reasons".

Now gave up the profession of the teacher and instead began a law degree . This was possible because of a law of 1876, which allowed women to study at universities and guaranteed them the right to a degree. She completed her studies in 1888. With her desire to be admitted as the first female lawyer in Belgium, she triggered the so-called poplin affair : despite great echoes in the media, she was refused to practice. While no law prohibited the admission of women as attorneys, the Civil Code and a law on legal regulations did not provide for women. Marie Popelin - single and childless - was assumed to be impossible to take care of professional and family duties at the same time. An appeal failed in court in 1889 with a reprimand that the legislature had to act. The affair showed that it was not enough to give women access to education if they were subsequently unable to practice the professions they had learned. Instead, Popelin worked as a consultant in a law firm.

In 1892 she founded a women's rights league as Belgium 's first feminist organization. Other prominent members were Isala van Diest (first Belgian general practitioner) and Louis Frank (1864–1917), a fellow student of Popelin, who also campaigned for the right of women to work as a lawyer.

In 1897 Popelin organized an international women's congress in Brussels after she had already participated in the congress in Paris in 1889 and had made the acquaintance of other feminists there, such as Mary Wright Sewall . On this occasion the idea came up to merge the Belgian feminist and women's associations under a national umbrella organization - this was promoted by the International Women's Council since 1888 . It was only in 1905 that Belgium succeeded in establishing the Belgian National Council for Women (CNFB), for which the League for Women's Rights, the Union of Belgian Women Against Alcoholism and the Belgian Society for the Improvement of the Lot of Women came together. By 1913, a total of eleven associations had been willing to work together, but there was no joint initiative, especially on the part of the political parties. She remained president of the CNFB for many years and was followed in office by pacifist Léonie La Fontaine , women's suffrage activist Jane Brigode and teetotaler Marie Parent .

Popelin also took part in various other international women's congresses, such as the International Women's Congress in Toronto in 1909, and organized another congress in Brussels in 1912.

She campaigned for the legal equality of women in everyday Belgian life and achieved numerous improvements with her prominent demands. In 1900, the legislature gave women the right to do banking and in 1909 to assume custody rights and to participate in decisions within the family. Compulsory schooling for girls was only introduced shortly after their death in 1914. While a change in the law in France in 1900 ensured that Popelin's colleague Jeanne Chauvin was allowed to practice as a lawyer, it was not until 1922 that the first Belgian women, Paule Lemy and Marcelle Renson, were admitted as lawyers (with the condition that a husband consented to their profession). From 1948, women were officially equal to men.

Honors and souvenirs

• Since 1981 the Nederlandstalige Vrouwenraad has been awarding the Prix ​​Marie Popelin every five years : The winners have already been Rita Mulier (1981), Renée Van Mechelen (1986), Paula D'Hondt (approx. 1990), Lily Boeykens (1995), Helima Guerra (2000 ), Miet Smet (2005), Anita Purnal (2010) and Marleen Temmerman (2016).
• she was portrayed on a postage stamp (1975 for the International Year of Women ) and a 2 euro commemorative coin (2011 on the occasion of the 100th International Women's Day together with Isala Van Diest)
• streets and public places were named after her, including in Brussels, Ghent , Hasselt and Sint-Truiden .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Mary Jane Mossman: The First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. ISBN 978-18-473-10958 . Pp. 252-255. Digitized
2. ^ ^{A b} Conseil des femmes francophones de Belgique asbl .: Historique
3. ^ Blanca Rodriguez Ruiz, Ruth Rubio Marín: The Struggle for Female Suffrage in Europe . Brill 2012. 978-90-042-29914 p. 416.