We explain what role women played in the French Revolution, who stood out and what rights they demanded.
The March on Versailles of 1789 began as a women’s demonstration.
What role did women play in the French Revolution?
The French Revolution was a revolutionary process that began in 1789. and had the objective of ending the political and social structures of the Ancien Régime in France.
Although most of its political protagonists were men, many Women from different social strata played a prominent role both in popular mobilizations (such as the march on Versailles) and in the organization of revolutionary clubs and societies (such as the Society of Revolutionary Republicans).
The struggle of women in the French Revolution combined revolutionary political goals with the demand for women’s rights. However, during the French Revolution women They remained largely excluded from political activityas demonstrated by the promulgation of universal, all-male suffrage in 1792. Even so, the recognition of some civil rights was achievedsuch as equality between men and women in the face of divorce.
Among the women who stood out during the French Revolution were Olympe de Gouges (author of the Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen), Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, Charlotte Corday and Théroigne de Méricourt.
Frequent questions
Who were the women who participated in the French Revolution?
Many women participated in the process of the French Revolution. Some of them are: Olympe de Gouges, Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, Marie-Jeanne Roland, Germaine de Staël, Charlotte Corday, Théroigne de Méricourt or Etta Palm.
What actions did women carry out in the French Revolution?
Many women participated in demonstrations against food shortages or against the Ancien Régime. Some women with certain resources collaborated with the revolutionary cause and acted as hostesses of salons where political figures met. They also wrote political speeches or pamphlets, presented demands for equal rights to the National Assembly and created women’s societies that contributed to one or another revolutionary faction (although in 1793 all women’s societies were closed by the revolutionary government).
What rights did women claim in the French Revolution?
In general, women who participated in the French Revolution demanded equality between men and women in areas such as political participation, voting rights and education. Although they did gain some civil rights, their political participation remained restricted.
Women on the march on Versailles
Before the French Revolution there were women in Europe whofrom an individual position, They raised demands in favor of female equalityAn example is the Spanish illustrator Josefa Amar, who wrote books such as Importance of the education that should be given to women (1784) and speeches like the Speech in defense of women’s talent and their aptitude for government (1786) or the Speech on the physical and moral education of women (1790).
However, it was not until the French Revolution that women’s voices began to be expressed collectively. In October 1789, almost three months after the storming of the Bastille, A group of women from Paris demonstrated against the high price of bread and the shortage of flour.
Thousands of men and women from Paris joined the demonstration and, since King Louis XVI had held a banquet in his palace days before, They began to march towards the Palace of Versailles to express their indignation and demand that the king and queen move to Paris and abandon their luxuries.
Some protesters managed to enter the palace and violence broke out until the king agreed to move his family to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
Condorcet’s ideas on women’s rights
Among the French enlightened men who developed the ideological program of the French Revolution, the figure of Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794) stands out, who in his work Sketch of a historical picture of the progress of the human spirit (published posthumously in 1795) demanded recognition of the social role of women.
Condorcet compared the social condition of women of his time with that of slaves and He was in favor of citizen participationas he expressed in the essay On the admission of women to the right of citizenship (1790). After the triumph of the revolution in 1789, the an obvious contradiction: a revolution that based its justification on the universal idea of the natural and political equality of human beings (“liberty, equality, fraternity”), denied access to women (Half of the population) to political rightswhich in reality meant denying their freedom and equality with respect to other individuals.
“Habit may so familiarize men with the violation of their natural rights that no one will be found among those who have lost them who would even think of claiming them, or think that he has been wronged. (…) For instance, have they not all violated the principle of equal rights by so thoughtlessly depriving half the human race of the right to participate in the making of laws, that is, by excluding women from the right of citizenship? Can there be any clearer proof of the power of habit even in learned men than to see the principle of equal rights invoked (…) and then forgotten in regard to twelve million women?”
Nicolas de Condorcet
On the admission of women to the right of citizenship, 1790
Olympia de Gouges and the Declaration of the Rights of Women
Olympe de Gouges demanded freedom, equality and political rights for women.
The playwright and revolutionary activist Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793), born Marie Gouze, She was the main protagonist of the fight for women’s rights during the French Revolution.
In 1791 published the Declaration of the Rights of Women and of the Female Citizen which was a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by the National Assembly in August 1789 but with some significant changes in the terms used.
A comparison between both texts is enlightening:
“The representatives of the French people, constituted in a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public evils and of the corruption of governments (…) recognize and declare (…) the following rights of man and of the citizen.”
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789
“Mothers, daughters, and sisters, representatives of the nation, ask to be constituted into a National Assembly. Considering that ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of women are the sole causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments, they have resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of women (…)”.
Olympia of Gouges
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789
In reinterpreting the great programmatic document of the revolution, Olympe de Gouges She denounced that the revolution had forgotten women in its egalitarian and liberating project. He claimed that the ““Woman is born free and must remain equal to man in rights” and that “the law must be the expression of the general will; all citizens must contribute, personally or through their representatives, to its formation.”
The programme of Olympe de Gouges was clear: freedom, equality and political rights, especially the right to vote, for women. However, The feminist approach was not shared by the vast majority of men who led the revolution.. Many believed that women should take care of the private chores of the home and family.
In 1793, during the period of Jacobin rule known as “the Terror”, Olympia of Gouges She was accused of defending the political principles of the Girondins (opponents of the Jacobins), She was imprisoned and executed by guillotine.
The Society of Revolutionary Republicans
In the faction of the enraged (one of the most radical factions of the French Revolution) had gathered some sans-culottes Parisians (lower urban sectors, such as artisans and workers). In this group There were revolutionary women, like the actress Claire Lacombe.
In 1793, Lacombe created the Society of Revolutionary Republicans with Pauline LéonPauline Léon had participated in the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 and had presented a document signed by more than three hundred women to the National Assembly in 1792, in which she requested the formation of an armed female militia (a project that was ultimately rejected).
The Society of Revolutionary Republicans was made up of women belonging to the working classes and the petite bourgeoisie, who They defended the right of women to participate in the revolution and demanded improvements in their living conditions. Some wore the tricolour cockade or the Phrygian cap of revolutionary France.
However, In October 1793 the National Convention that governed France closed this and all women’s societies and clubs that existed in France, which, together with the execution of Olympe de Gouges, symbolized the failure of feminist demands during the French Revolution.
After the revolution, the Napoleonic Civil Code (1804), which included the main social advances of the revolution, denied women the civil rights granted to men during the revolutionary period (legal equality, property rights), and imposed discriminatory laws according to which The home was defined as the exclusive sphere of female action.
Other notable women of the French Revolution
Marie-Jeanne Roland
Marie-Jeanne Roland participated in the revolution alongside the Girondins.
In France, literary salons were meeting places for political and literary figures. Among the hosts of these salons were women, such as Marie-Jeanne Roland, who was a…