Authors: Simone de Beauvoir
The Socialist Congress of 1879 proclaimed the equality of the sexes, and as of that time the feminist-socialist alliance would no longer be denounced, but since women hope for their liberty through the emancipation of workers in general, their attachment to their own cause is secondary. The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, claim new rights within existing society, and they refuse to be revolutionary; they want to introduce virtuous reforms into rules of behavior: elimination of alcohol, pornographic literature, and prostitution. In 1892, the Feminist Congress convenes and gives its name to the movement, but nothing comes of it. However, in 1897 a law is passed permitting women to testify in court, but the request of a woman doctor of law to become a member of the bar is denied. In 1898, women are allowed to vote for the Commercial Court, to vote and be eligible for the National Council on Labor and Employment, to be admitted to the National Council for Public Health Services, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1900, feminists hold a new congress, again without significant results. But in 1901, for the first time, Viviani presents the question of the woman’s vote to the French parliament; he proposes limiting suffrage to unmarried and divorced women. The feminist movement gains importance at this time. In 1909 the French Union for Women’s Suffrage is formed, headed by Mme Brunschvicg; she organizes lectures, meetings, congresses, and demonstrations. In 1909, Buisson presents a report on Dussaussoy’s bill allowing women to vote in local assemblies. In 1910, Thomas presents a bill in favor of women’s suffrage; presented again in 1918, it passes the Chamber in 1919; but it fails to pass the Senate in 1922. The situation is
quite complex. Christian feminism joins forces with revolutionary feminism and Mme Brunschvicg’s so-called independent feminism: in 1919, Benedict XV declares himself in favor of the women’s vote, and Monsignor Baudrillart and Père Sertillanges follow his lead with ardent propaganda; Catholics believe in fact that women in France constitute a conservative and religious element; this is just what the radicals fear: the real reason for their opposition is their fear of the swing votes that women represented. In the Senate, numerous Catholics, the Union Republican group, and extreme left parties are for the women’s vote: but the majority of the assembly is against it. Until 1932 delaying procedures are used by the majority, which refuses to discuss bills concerning women’s suffrage; nevertheless, in 1932, the Chamber having voted the women’s voting and eligibility amendment, 319 votes to 1, the Senate opens a debate extending over several sessions: the amendment is voted down. The record in
L’officiel
is of great importance; all the antifeminist arguments developed over half a century are found in the report, which fastidiously lists all the works in which they are mentioned. First of all come these types of gallantry arguments: we love women too much to let them vote; the “real woman” who accepts the “housewife or courtesan” dilemma is exalted in true Proudhon fashion; woman would lose her charm by voting; she is on a pedestal and should not step down from it; she has everything to lose and nothing to gain in becoming a voter; she governs men without needing a ballot; and so on. More serious objections concern the family’s interest: woman’s place is in the home; political discussions would bring about disagreement between spouses. Some admit to moderate antifeminism. Women are different from men. They do not serve in the military. Will prostitutes vote? And others arrogantly affirm male superiority: voting is a duty and not a right; women are not worthy of it. They are less intelligent and educated than men. If women voted, men would become effeminate. Women lacked political education. They would vote according to their husbands’ wishes. If they want to be free, they should first free themselves from their dressmakers. Also proposed is that superbly naive argument: there are more women in France than men. In spite of the flimsiness of all these objections, French women would have to wait until 1945 to acquire political power.
New Zealand gave woman full rights in 1893. Australia followed in 1908. But in England and America victory was difficult. Victorian England imperiously isolated woman in her home; Jane Austen wrote in secret; it took great courage or an exceptional destiny to become George Eliot or Emily Brontë; in 1888 an English scholar wrote: “Women are not only not part of the race, they are not even half of the race but a sub-species destined
uniquely for reproduction.” Mrs. Fawcett founded a suffragist movement toward the end of the century, but as in France the movement was hesitant. Around 1903, feminist claims took a singular turn. In London, the Pankhurst family created the Women’s Social and Political Union, which joined with the Labour Party and embarked on resolutely militant activities. It was the first time in history that women took on a cause as women: this is what gave particular interest to the suffragettes in England and America. For fifteen years, they carried out a policy recalling in some respects a Gandhi-like attitude: refusing violence, they invented more or less ingenious symbolic actions. They marched on the Albert Hall during Liberal Party meetings, carrying banners with the words “Vote for Women”; they forced their way into Lord Asquith’s office, held meetings in Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square, marched in the streets carrying signs, and held lectures; during demonstrations they insulted the police or threw stones at them, provoking their arrest; in prison they adopted the hunger strike tactic; they raised money and rallied millions of women and men; they influenced opinion so well that in 1907 two hundred members of Parliament made up a committee for women’s suffrage; every year from then on some of them would propose a law in favor of women’s suffrage, a law that would be rejected every year with the same arguments. In 1907 the WSPU organized the first march on Parliament with workers covered in shawls, and a few aristocratic women; the police pushed them back; but the following year, as married women were threatened with a ban on work in certain mines, the Lancashire women workers were called by the WSPU to hold a grand meeting. There were new arrests, and the imprisoned suffragettes responded with a long hunger strike. Released, they organized new parades: one of the women rode a horse painted with the head of Queen Elizabeth. On July 18, 1910, the day the women’s suffrage law went to the Chamber, a nine-kilometer-long column paraded through London; the law rejected, there were more meetings and new arrests. In 1912, they adopted a more violent tactic: they burned empty houses, slashed pictures, trampled flower beds, threw stones at the police; at the same time, they sent delegation upon delegation to Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey; they hid in the Albert Hall and noisily disrupted Lloyd George’s speeches. The war interrupted their activities. It is difficult to know how much these actions hastened events. The vote was granted to English women first in 1918 in a restricted form, and then in 1928 without restriction: their success was in large part due to the services they had rendered during the war.
The American woman found herself at first more emancipated than the European. Early in the nineteenth century, pioneer women had to share
the hard work done by men, and they fought by their sides; they were far fewer than men, and thus a high value was placed on them. But little by little, their condition came to resemble that of women in the Old World; gallantry toward them was maintained; they kept their cultural privileges and a dominant position within the family; laws granted them a religious and moral role; but the command of society resided in the males’ hands. Some women began to claim their political rights around 1830. They undertook a campaign in favor of blacks. As the antislavery congress held in 1840 in London was closed to them, the Quaker Lucretia Mott founded a feminist association. On July 18, 1840,
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at the Seneca Falls Convention, they drafted a Quaker-inspired declaration, which set the tone for all of American feminism: “that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights … that to secure these rights governments are instituted … He [Man] has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead … He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her conscience and her God.” Three years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
, arousing the public in favor of blacks. Emerson and Lincoln supported the feminist movement. When the Civil War broke out, women ardently participated; but in vain they demanded that the amendment giving blacks the right to vote be drafted as follows: “The right … to vote shall not be denied or abridged … on account of race, color,
sex
.” Seizing on the ambiguity of one of the articles to the amendment, the great feminist leader Susan B. Anthony voted in Rochester with fourteen comrades; she was fined a hundred dollars. In 1869, she founded what later came to be called the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and that same year the state of Wyoming gave women the right to vote. But it was only in 1893 that Colorado, then in 1896 Idaho and Utah, followed this example. Progress was slow afterward. But women succeeded better economically than in Europe. In 1900, 5 million women worked, 1.3 million in industry, 500,000 in business; a large number worked in business, industry, and liberal professions. There were lawyers, doctors, and 3,373 women pastors. The famous Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Church. Women formed clubs; in 1900, they totaled about 2 million members.
Nonetheless, only nine states had given women the vote. In 1913, the
suffrage movement was organized on the militant English model. Two women led it: Doris Stevens and a young Quaker, Alice Paul. From Wilson they obtained the right to march with banners and signs;
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they then organized a campaign of lectures, meetings, marches, and manifestations of all sorts. From the nine states where women voted, women voters went with great pomp and circumstance to the Capitol, demanding the feminine vote for the whole nation. In Chicago, the first group of women assembled in a party to liberate their sex; this assembly became the Women’s Party. In 1917, suffragettes invented a new tactic: they stationed themselves at the doors of the White House, banners in hand, and often chained to the gates so they could not be driven away. After six months, they were stopped and sent to the Occoquan penitentiary; they went on a hunger strike and were finally released. New demonstrations led to the beginning of riots. The government finally consented to naming a House Committee on Woman Suffrage. The executive committee of the Women’s Party held a conference in Washington, and an amendment favoring the woman’s vote went to the House and was voted on January 10, 1918. The vote still had to go to the Senate. Wilson would not promise to exert enough pressure, so the suffragettes began to demonstrate again. They held a rally at the White House doors. The president decided to address an appeal to the Senate, but the amendment was rejected by two votes. A Republican Congress voted for the amendment in June 1919. The battle for complete equality of the sexes went on for the next ten years. At the sixth International Conference of American States held in Havana in 1928, women obtained the creation of the Inter-American Commission of Women. In 1933, the Montevideo treaties elevated women’s status by international convention. Nineteen American republics signed the convention giving women equality in all rights.
Sweden also had a very sizable feminist movement. Invoking old traditions, Swedish women demanded the right “to education, work, and liberty.” It was largely women writers who led the fight, and it was the moral aspect of the problem that interested them at first; then, grouped in powerful associations, they won over the liberals but ran up against the hostility of the conservatives. Norwegian women in 1907 and Finnish women in 1906 obtained the suffrage that Swedish women would have to wait years to attain.
In Latin and Eastern countries woman was oppressed by customs more
than by laws. In Italy, fascism systematically hindered feminism’s progress. Seeking the alliance of the Church, which continued to uphold family tradition and a tradition of feminine slavery, Fascist Italy held woman in double bondage: to public authority and to her husband. The situation was very different in Germany. In 1790, Hippel, a student, launched the first German feminist manifesto. Sentimental feminism analogous to that of George Sand flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1848, the first German woman feminist, Louise Otto, demanded the right for women to assist in the transformation of their country: her feminism was largely nationalistic. She founded the General German Women’s Association in 1865. German socialists, along with Bebel, advocated the abolition of the inequality of the sexes. In 1892, Clara Zetkin joined the party’s council. Women workers and women socialists grouped together in a federation. German women failed in 1914 to establish a women’s national army, but they took an active part in the war. After the German defeat, they obtained the right to vote and participated in political life: Rosa Luxemburg fought next to Liebknecht in the Spartacus group and was assassinated in 1919. The majority of German women chose the party of order; several took seats in the Reichstag. It was thus upon emancipated women that Hitler imposed the new Napoleonic ideal:
“Kinder, Küche, Kirche.”
“Woman’s presence dishonors the Reichstag,” he declared. As Nazism was anti-Catholic and antibourgeois, he gave the mother a privileged place; protection granted to unmarried mothers and illegitimate children greatly freed woman from marriage; as in Sparta, she was more dependent on the state than on any individual, giving her both more and less autonomy than a bourgeois woman living under a capitalist regime.
In Soviet Russia the feminist movement made the greatest advances. It began at the end of the nineteenth century among women students of the intelligentsia; they were less attached to their personal cause than to revolutionary action in general; they “went to the people” and used nihilistic methods against the Okhrana: in 1878 Vera Zasulich shot the police chief Trepov. During the Russo-Japanese War, women replaced men in many areas of work; their consciousness raised, the Russian Union for Women’s rights demanded political equality of the sexes; in the first Duma, a parliamentary women’s rights group was created, but it was powerless. Women workers’ emancipation would come from the revolution. Already in 1905, they were actively participating in the mass political strikes that broke out in the country, and they mounted the barricades. On March 8, 1917, International Women’s Day and a few days before the revolution, they massively demonstrated in the streets of St. Petersburg demanding bread,
peace, and their husbands’ return. They took part in the October insurrection; between 1918 and 1920, they played an important economic and even military role in the U.S.S.R.’s fight against the invaders. True to Marxist tradition, Lenin linked women’s liberation to that of the workers; he gave them political and economic equality.