On the eve of the French Revolution, women’s role in French society was as wives and mothers. Ruled first by their fathers, then their husbands, in legal terms, they were considered eternal minors and limited to the domestic sphere. This book, richly illustrated with many hitherto unpublished documents, recreates French women’s long march for equal rights. It starts with the Revolution, when women began to stick up for their own specific rights, and the appearance of the first major figures of feminism, many of whom, like Olympe de Gouges and her famous Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens, met tragic fates. The diversity of women’s condition is made visible thanks to the excellent selection of rare photos, like those of nurses during World War I. At the end of that conflict women who had replaced their soldier husbands in the workplace were bitterly disillusioned when the post-war forced them back into the home. In 1922 the French Senate refused the suffrage women had been hoping for. From 1789 to 1920, French women were often disappointed, rarely acknowledged and constantly struggling for emancipation.

This lavishly illustrated book contains more than 200 images of a little-known period in the history of French feminism.