1 week Ago By RFI
Eighty years ago French women went to the polls for the first time, during municipal elections on 29 April 1945 – turning a centuries-long battle for equality into an historic reality. Women in France secured the right to vote on 21 April 1944 through a wartime decree issued by the provisional government under General de Gaulle. "Women are voters and eligible [for election] under the same conditions as men," it read.
But it took another year for women to be able to fully exercise that right for the first time, during municipal elections on 29 April and 13 May. "I was happy and proud to vote," recalls Marcelle Abadie, now 105 years old. "For the first time, people were asking for my opinion.
It really stayed with me," she told France's AFP news agency. At polling stations, however, some men "looked at us as if we didn’t belong there. At that time, women were still seen primarily as housekeepers," she said.
The long road towards gender equality "The right to vote was the result of a very long struggle," said historian Françoise Thébaud, a specialist in feminist movements. The fight began with the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen , written by Olympe de Gouges in 1791. Women demanded suffrage again during the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, though these were "individual demands or those of small groups," Thébaud notes.
"In France, as elsewhere, the organised suffragist movement only truly emerged in the 20th century," Thébaud notes. "Everything took place calmly and very seriously." (with AFP) Read more on RFI English Read also: Women's long battle to vote in France and the generations who fought it Why do women in France still earn less than men? Protesters rally on International Women's Day, fearing far right.
