On International Women’s Day, a quick search for famous European feminists led me to Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793).
Revolutionary France may have been inspired by the likes of Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau but the freedoms sought were largely intended for the male sex. Thomas Pain set out in the Rights of Man a rebuttal to Edmund Burke’s condemnation of the French Revolution and championed natural rights and freedoms. The word ‘man’ in those times was often used where we would now use ‘people’. But equality was about class, not gender.
Olympe de Gouges was an aristocrat denounced by her own class as a democrat. She was eventually executed in 1793 for her poster “The Three Urns, or the Salvation of the Fatherland, by an Aerial Traveller” which dared to suggest three ways forward for post-revolutionary France: constitutional monarchy, a unitary republic or a federalist government.
This extract is translated from the French:
Man, are you capable of being fair? A woman is asking: at least you will allow her that right. Tell me? What gave you the sovereign right to oppress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the creator in his wisdom, examine nature in all its grandeur for you seem to wish to get closer to it, and give me, if you dare, a pattern for this tyrannical power.
Reconsider animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally, cast an eye over all the variations of all living organisms; yield to the evidence that I have given you: search, excavate and discover, if you can, sexual characteristics in the workings of nature: everywhere you will find them intermingled, everywhere cooperating harmoniously within this immortal masterpiece.
Only man has cobbled together a rule to exclude himself from this system. Bizarre, blind, puffed up with science and degenerate, in this century of enlightenment and wisdom, with the crassest ignorance, he wants to command, like a despot, a sex that is blessed with every intellectual faculty; he feigns to rejoice in the revolution and demands its equal rights, to say nothing more…
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN AND THE FEMALE CITIZEN
To be decreed by the National Assembly in its last sessions or in those of the next legislature…
As a result, the sex that is superior in beauty as it is in courage during the pains of childbirth recognises and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.
FIRST ARTICLE
Woman is born free and remains the equal of man in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded on a common utility.
….selected Articles (there are 17 in total)
ARTICLE XII
Guaranteeing the rights of woman and the female citizen will be a great benefit: this guarantee must be instituted for the good of all and not just to benefit those individuals to whom it is entrusted.
ARTICLE XIII
Women and men are to contribute equally to the upkeep of the forces of law and order and to the costs of administration: woman shares all the labour, all the hard tasks; she should therefore have an equal share of positions, employment, responsibilities, honours and professions.
ARTICLE XIV
Female and male citizens have a right to decide for themselves, or through their representatives, the necessity of public contribution. Female citizens can only subscribe to it if they are allowed an equal share not only of wealth but also of public administration and in determining the amount, assessment, collection and duration of the tax.
odespinner 