Question

Describe the role of women in the revolutionary movement in France. When did women gain political equality in France?

Answer 1

During the French Revolution, women, especially in Paris,

They were directly involved with major events, such as the attack on the Bastille, the October Days of 1789, the Reign of Terror, and bread riots throughout the revolution.

Women also experienced the new and short-lived phenomenon of mixed and womens-only clubs such as the Les Amies de la Verite and the Club des Citoyennes Republicans Revolutionaries. T

he feminist movement, guided by Olympe de Gouges, the Marquise de Condorcet, and Etta Palm dAelders, had success in the sense that it achieved the most important of its far-reaching goals, but failed in the sense that it did not garner support throughout all social classes. There was a significant difference in the experiences shared by the working-class and aristocrats.

Women in participated in the Revolution more than anyone from that time would have imagined possible and more than historians had previously thought. Their role was instrumental in the fate of the revolution and will always be remembered as a time that changed the status of women throughout all of Europe

Answer 2

Historians since the late 20th century have debated how women shared in the French Revolution and what long-term impact it had on French women. Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they were considered "passive" citizens; forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them. That changed dramatically in theory as there seemingly were great advances in feminism. Feminism emerged in Paris as part of a broad demand for social and political reform. The women demanded equality to men and then moved on to a demand for the end of male domination. Their chief vehicle for agitation were pamphlets and women's clubs, especially the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women. However, the Jacobin(radical) element in power abolished all the women's clubs in October 1793 and arrested their leaders. The movement was crushed. Devance explains the decision in terms of the emphasis on masculinity in wartime, Marie Antoinette's bad reputation for feminine interference in state affairs, and traditional male supremacy.[1] A decade later the Napoleonic Code confirmed and perpetuated women's second-class status.[2]