Le Droit de vote des femmes - La Grande Explication

(Re)Watch more episodes of #LaGrandeExplication 👉 http://bit.ly/la-grande-explication Subscribe! 👉 http://bit.ly/2QLeh5V On April 29, 1945, French people went to their polling stations for the municipal elections. French people, but above all, French women, because for the first time in French history, women had the right to vote. A year earlier, on April 21, 1944, an ordinance issued by General de Gaulle finally granted them this right, for which they had fought for over a century. French women were then among the last women in Europe to have access to the polls. Why did women obtain the right to vote so late? During the French Revolution, it was in Paris that one of the first feminist voices in the world rose. The intrepid Olympe de Gouges called for equality between men and women in her famous Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. But, far ahead of her time, she was guillotined... It wasn't until the mid-19th century that the first feminist movements emerged, driven by the daring Hubertine Auclert and the visionary Louise Michel. Then, in the 1900s, encouraged by British suffragettes who organized numerous demonstrations to obtain the right to vote, the debate gained momentum. French women were rallying! Slowly, they began to make their voices heard... The First World War broke out. For four years, women mobilized to replace the men who had gone to the front. So, for this service to their homelands, many countries granted them the right to vote. In France, this was not the case. Bills followed one after another, but they were systematically blocked by the Senate. Women's place was considered to be at home, with their children... far from the ballot box. Unable to vote on their own, they were apparently influenced by the Church, which thus regained its influence over society. Far from being discouraged, French women continued the fight. In the 1930s, they launched numerous petitions and awareness campaigns. In 1934, Louise Weiss founded the association La Femme Nouvelle and, despite being ineligible, ran in the municipal elections in Montmartre. It wasn't until 1944 that attitudes finally changed and women finally obtained the right to vote. 1944, a pivotal year for women's rights In April 1944, France was still occupied by Nazi Germany. But the Liberation was imminent: the Allied forces were preparing to land in Normandy. General de Gaulle, a great hero of the Resistance, was thinking about the future. He wanted to bury the humiliating Vichy regime forever and build a new France... of which he would be the leader. On April 21, he signed a 33-article ordinance aimed at laying new constitutional foundations for post-war France. Among these reforms: women's right to vote, which, championed by Communist MP Fernand Grenier, was almost unanimously supported. And for good reason! How could one still deny the right to vote to those who had massively engaged in the Resistance? How could one deny them the right to participate in the political life of a country for which they had risked their lives? Women would henceforth be eligible to vote, under the same conditions as men. In 1946, equal rights between men and women were enshrined in the preamble to the Constitution... but it was still far from being respected. Towards the end of gender inequality? In the 1960s, society was evolving rapidly and French women were becoming emancipated. They obtained the right to work and open a bank account without their husband's permission. But there was no question of stopping there! The new generation of feminists, including the famous philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, demanded the right to control their own bodies and their fertility. In 1967, the Neuwirth Law was a first victory: contraception was finally legalized. No sooner had this battle been won than the Women's Liberation Movement was born. In the 1970s, thousands of women took to the streets and, thanks to Simone Veil, obtained the legalization of abortion in 1975. More than two centuries after Olympes de Gouges, the place of women in society has profoundly changed and progress has been considerable, but inequalities persist and mobilization continues. ####################################### Even more content at: https://www.lumni.fr Find Lumni on: Facebook ▶   / lumnifr   Twitter ▶   / lumni.fr   Instagram ▶   / lumnifr