War years The
Union des femmes françaises had its origins in France during the
Second World War.
Women's committees of the
French Resistance were born of the grassroots Resistance committees created by
Danielle Casanova. These women's committees gradually took shape at local levels, then at the regional and inter-regional level. They were regrouped within the Union des femmes françaises in the
zone occupée and the Union des femmes de France in the
zone libre. The leaders were , then
Maria Rabaté for the northern zone, after the arrest of Danielle Casanova and Marcelle Barjonet. and Simone Bertrand in the .
Post-war period Women were not allowed to become judges in France until 1946. She argues that women have historically been considered deviant and abnormal, and contends that even
Mary Wollstonecraft considered men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. De Beauvoir argues that for feminism to move forward, this attitude must be set aside. The
Neuwirth Law legalized birth control in 1967, but the relative
executive decrees were blocked for a couple years by the conservative government.
May 1968 and its aftermath A strong feminist movement would only emerge in the aftermath of
May 1968, with the creation of the
Mouvement de libération des femmes (Women's Liberation Movement, MLF), allegedly by
Antoinette Fouque,
Monique Wittig and Josiane Chanel in 1968. The name itself was given by the press, in reference to the US
Women's Lib movement. In the frame of the cultural and social changes that occurred during the
Fifth Republic, they advocated the right of autonomy from their husbands, and the rights to
contraception and to
abortion. The paternal authority of a man over his family in France was ended in 1970 (before that parental responsibilities belonged solely to the father who made all legal decisions concerning the children). From 1970, the procedures for the use of the title "
Mademoiselle" were challenged in France, particularly by feminist groups who wanted it banned. A circular from
François Fillon, then
Prime Minister, dated 21 February 2012, called for the deletion of the word "Mademoiselle" in all official documents. On 26 December 2012, the
Council of State approved the deletion. In 1971, the feminist lawyer
Gisèle Halimi founded the group
Choisir ("To Choose"), to protect the women who had signed "Le Manifeste des 343 Salopes" (in English "
Manifesto of the 343 Sluts" or alternately "Manifesto of the 343 Bitches"), written by
Simone de Beauvoir. This provocative title became popular after Cabu's drawing on a satirical journal with the caption:
« Who got those 343 whores pregnant? »); the women were admitting to have had illegal abortions, and therefore exposing themselves to judicial actions and prison sentences. The Manifesto had been published in
Le Nouvel Observateur on 5 April 1971. The Manifesto was the inspiration for a 3 February 1973, manifesto by 331 doctors declaring their support for abortion rights: We want freedom of abortion. It is entirely the woman's decision. We reject any entity that forces her to defend herself, perpetuates an atmosphere of guilt, and allows underground abortions to persist ....
Choisir had transformed into a clearly reformist body in 1972, and their campaign greatly influenced the passing of the law allowing contraception and abortion carried through by
Simone Veil in 1975. The Veil Act was at the time hotly contested by Veil's own party, the conservative
Union for French Democracy (UDF). In 1974,
Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term "
ecofeminism." A new reform in France in 1985 abolished the stipulation that the father had the sole power to administer the children's property. Its writings tend to be effusive and metaphorical being less concerned with political doctrine and generally focused on theories of "the body". The term includes writers who are not French, but who have worked substantially in France and the French tradition. In the 1970s, French writers approached feminism with the concept of
écriture féminine (which translates as female, or feminine writing).
Hélène Cixous argues that writing and philosophy are
phallocentric and along with other French feminists such as
Luce Irigaray emphasize "writing from the body" as a subversive exercise. Through their own concept of French feminism, American academics separated and ignored the already marginalized self-identifying feminists, while focusing on the women theorists associated with
Psych et po and other academics who did not always identify as feminists themselves. This division ended up placing more importance on the theories of the French feminists than the political agenda and goals that groups such as radical feminists and the MLF had at the time. ==Third-wave feminism==