Women s role in french revolution

SOCIAL

Women’s role in the
FRENCH REVOLUTION

Women not invited to the assembly of estates general

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On 5 May, 1789, Louis XVI called a meeting of the estates meeting and women were not invited. However, their grievances were drafted in the
40000 letters. The modesty of most of these complaints and demands demonstrates the depth of the prejudice against women's separate political activity. Women could ask for better education and protection of their property rights, but even the most politically vociferous among them did not yet demand full civil and political rights.

Role of women in demolition of
Bastille

On the morning of 14th July, 1789, women were fetching water and were waiting in the queue for long hours. The king had commanded his troops to move into the city. The women got furious and joined the men to demolish the king’s despotic power- Bastille.

Women’s march to Versailles

The Women's March on Versailles, also known as The October March, The October Days, or simply The March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French revolution. Around 7000 women marched from Versailles to France in rain chanting “BREAD BREAD”. This was due to the subsistence crisis, that there was a scarcity of bread and the remaining bread was shared by the first two estates and a very less share was given to the third estate. So, the women got furious and marched to
Versailles.

PRESSURIZING LOUIS XVI TO MOVE TO
PARIS

King and his family resided in a lavish palace at Versailles. Women went gaga over the scarcity o bread. A crowd of women in Paris gathered to march to
Versailles to demand an accounting from the King. They trudged the twelve miles from Paris in the rain, arriving soaked and tired. At the end of the day and during the night, the women were joined by thousands of men who had marched from Paris to join them. The next day the crowd grew more turbulent and eventually broke into the royal apartments, killing two of the King's bodyguards.
To prevent further bloodshed, the King agreed to move his family back to Paris

Women’s mode of bread-winning
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Now men were busy with the political activities so women became the bread-winners of the family. Earlier women did only the house-hold chores and were not allowed to earn for their living. 

Now they became seamstresses, laundresses, sold flowers, fruits, became peasants and worked as maids.

Women’s rights were unequal to men’s

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Women's participation was not confined to rioting and demonstrating.
Women began to attend meetings of political clubs, and both men and women soon agitated for the guarantee of women's rights. In July
1790 a leading intellectual and aristocrat, Marie-Jean Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, published a newspaper article in support of full political rights for women. That caused a sensation.

Women’s clubs for equality

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There were 60 clubs in France.

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Women had their own clubs and newspapers.

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The popular clubs were-

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The society of revolutionary and;

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Republican women

FIGHT FOR EQUALITY

• . Male revolutionaries promptly rejected every call for equal rights for women. But their reactions in print and in speech show that these demands troubled their conception of the proper role for women. Now they had to explain themselves; rejection of women's rights was no longer automatic, in part because the revolutionary governments established divorce, with equal rights for women in suing for divorce, and granted girls equal rights to the inheritance of family property. In February 1791 one of the leading newspapers responded explicitly to Condorcet's article demanding equal political rights for women.

BETTERMENT IN THEIR
PLIGHT
• Although women had not gained the right to vote or hold office (and indeed would not do so in France until 1944!), they had certainly made their presence known during the Revolution. At the end of the decade of revolution, a well-known writer, Constance Pipelet, offered her views on its impact on women. Although she stopped short of repeating
Condorcet's or Olympe de Gouges's demands for absolutely equal rights for women, she did insist that the Revolution had forced women to become more aware of their status in society. She also argued that the
Republic should justify itself by offering women more education and more opportunities. Her writing shows that women's demands had been heard and that even if they had gone underground, they had not been forgotten.

GROWTH OF PROTEST
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Most women acted in more collective, less individually striking fashion. First and foremost, they endeavored to guarantee food for their families.

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The members hoped to gain political education for themselves and a platform for expressing their views to the political authorities.

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As the political situation grew more turbulent and dangerous in the fall of 1793, the revolutionary government became suspicious of the Society of
Revolutionary Republican Women.

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On 3 November 1793, Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was put to death. FRENCH WOMEN VOTE FOR THE FIRST TIME!

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suffrage European, Asian and African countries did not pass women's until after World War I. Late adopters in Europe were France in 1944. Late but Yes French women voted for the first time.

A presentation solely on women’s role in French revolution.
 REEMA
 Anand
 Sanskar
 Tejaswini
 Kaanthik
 Chandana

Bhavani

 Mahankali

Sripaad

 Shravani

GROUP C

THANK
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