The Feminists of the French Revolution
How the women of 1789 fought to make their voices heard
Far from being a setback for the situation of women, the French Revolution led to an improvement in the status of women. They obtained a certain number of rights during the first years of the revolution. They “won” equality in marriage and, in the face of divorce and inheritance, they were granted the status of “citizen”. The revolutionary legislators gave them a real civil existence: civil rights and their own legal personality. But this was a contrasting improvement in the status of women.
Although there was progress on the civil level, no political rights were granted to women. They were simply excluded from the public and political spheres and quickly returned to their obligations and duties as “women”. The doors of institutional and political power were still closed to them and they still did not have the right to vote. The French Revolution thus appeared to be a field where only male ambitions were fought. Only a few rare feminine figures, such as Olympe de Gouges or Théroigne de Méricourt for example, seemed to emerge from this male tumult.
The lack of recognition and the prohibition of women in politics allowed those same women to take over the public space, to appropriate it, to make it their political terrain. Despite what one…
