responses to women's enfranchisement in france, 1944–1945

RESPONSES TO WOMEN’S ENFRANCHISEMENT

IN FRANCE, 1944–1945

Joan Tumblety

Department of History, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO171BJ, Hampshire, UK

Synopsis — France was one of the first countries in Europe to grant suffrage rights to men (in 1848)but one of the last to include women in the franchise. This article explores the response to theintroduction of universal suffrage in France in 1944 and to the first post-Liberation elections of 1945,focusing on an analysis both of the national press and the organ of the large women’s organization, theUnion des Femmes Franc�aises (UFF). It also mobilizes evidence from public opinion surveys of theperiod in order to gauge the popular response to women’s voting rights and to measure thinking on the‘‘Woman Question’’ in general. Documentary sources comprising the full results of an opinion poll ofOctober 1944 and articles from the women’s press are included. The evidence suggests that press andpopular responses alike emphasized the needs of post-war reconstruction over those of women’semancipation. D 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

When an overwhelming majority voted for political

reform and a new constitution in the referendum

of October 1945, it seemed that ‘‘France wants

things to change’’ (Ce soir, 23 October 1945), yet

the available evidence suggests that, by contrast,

the inclusion of women in the franchise was not

expected to herald a more general shift in wom-

en’s place in French society. Indeed, as the exist-

ing literature amply demonstrates, the demands of

post-war reconstruction would call upon women

chiefly in their traditional roles as wives and

mothers, and the decades after 1944 did not entail

a radical break in patterns of women’s employ-

ment, family life or, perhaps surprisingly, even

their involvement in high politics (Allwood &

Wadia, 2000; Duchen, 1991, 1994; Diamond,

1999; Jenson, 1987). If the Liberation of 1944

remained a ‘‘revolution manquee’’ for the French

Left, whose hopes of a fundamental restructuring

of society were dashed by the imposition of rather

conservative republican rule, so too was it a

missed opportunity for a transformation of gender

relations and for a rethinking of democracy and

republicanism.

The aim of this article is to explore how seg-

ments of the French press perceived and understood

the granting of suffrage rights to women in 1944

and 1945, and, in addition, to mobilize the evidence

of public opinion surveys to demonstrate the degree

of popular support for the measure. The study

complements the analysis of the Liberation era press

provided by Bruno Denoyelle (Denoyelle, 1995,

1998) and extends it by considering the views

expressed in the women’s press, and by commenting

extensively on the hitherto overlooked public opin-

ion survey on the issue of female suffrage conducted

by the Institut Franc� ais d’Opinion Publique in

October 1944, a poll whose results were ignored

as much by the contemporary press as by subse-

quent researchers. A study of popular opinion along-

side newspaper comment reveals general attitudes

towards the ‘‘Woman Question’’ and the perceived

implications of women’s new voting rights. I con-

clude that, with some important exceptions, there

was a great deal of concordance in these views,

suggesting that thinking about gender identity and

gender roles crossed sex as well as party political,

and broader ideological, lines. In general, in the

national press, the women’s press and a significant

portion of public opinion, a discourse of national

reconstruction overtook one of emancipation or

historical change where gender relations were con-

cerned and it is, ultimately, the ubiquity of that view

which helps to explain why the Liberation period

was marked more by continuity than by rupture

where women’s roles in society were concerned.1

doi 10.1016/j.wsif.2003.08.005

Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 483 –497, 2003Copyright D 2003 Elsevier Ltd

Printed in the USA. All rights reserved0277-5395/$ – see front matter

483

WOMEN’S INCLUSION IN THESUFFRAGE

Despite the fact that the women’s resistance press

itself had offered no forum for debate on such

political issues as suffrage rights for women, and

despite the lack of overt feminism among female

resisters, the Liberation period was to introduce

women to full political rights for the first time in

French history. By 8 January 1944, a Gaullist com-

mission on reform, presided over by former Radical

senator Paul Giacobbi, had adopted the principle of

women’s voting rights, but decided that they should

not be exercised in an election of any kind until the

two million male deportees and prisoners of war had

returned to France. It was argued that to proceed

without the return of these male citizens would distort

the electorate by giving too much weight to the views

of women, a position that reveals the masculinist

assumptions of the commission’s members. The

commission thus advocated that in the first post-

Liberation elections women should be eligible to

stand as candidates but not eligible to vote (Du Roy

& Du Roy, 1994; Gueraiche, 1995). When the

proposal was debated in the Consultative Assembly

in Algiers on 24 March 1944, however, it was

modified by an amendment suggested by communist

Fernand Grenier, that, due to their spirit of valor and

sacrifice during the war, women be permitted to vote

and to stand for office henceforth on the same

conditions as men. The result of this debate was

communicated in an ordinance signed by de Gaulle

on 21 April 1944 and women’s status as citizens was

sealed. The debates on women’s suffrage in 1944

thereby highlight two crucial aspects of republican

discourse: first, that women were to be granted voting

rights on the grounds of deservedness rather than

inalienable rights; and secondly that, despite or per-

haps because of the ‘‘discursive universalism’’

(Denoyelle, 1998, pp. 77–78) reasserted by political

elites in this period, politicians had difficulty accept-

ing that women could exercise the rights of citizen-

ship with the same legitimacy as men.

On 12 September 1944, Charles de Gaulle himself

addressed the nation from the Palais de Chaillot in

Paris, cementing his position as legitimate leader of

the liberated French, and calling for an end to the war

in Europe and the re-establishment of French sover-

eignty. The press active in Paris covered the event in

a way that suggested its willingness, even in com-

munist quarters, to underpin de Gaulle’s popular

legitimacy. The coverage painted a picture of a city

mesmerized by a great leader: apparently men and

women stopped in the streets to hear de Gaulle’s

speech broadcast from loudspeakers and people

leaned out of apartment windows to listen to it

(Claude Martial, Liberation, 13 September 1944).

Despite the fact that de Gaulle had explicitly, and

indeed passionately, announced that women would

vote in the coming municipal elections then sched-

uled for February 1945, however, there was surpris-

ingly little editorial comment about this proclamation

of universal suffrage. Instead, newspapers empha-

sized the ‘‘sacred tasks’’ facing French women in

this period of flux, and they often mobilized the

words of female activists in order to do so. According

to Genevieve Rollin, writing in Liberation, women

were to prepare ‘‘maternally’’ for the return of the

deportees and to offer themselves as volunteers in the

various aid activities organized in advance of their

repatriation (15 September 1944).

What was missing from this discussion in the

national press in September 1944 was an acknowl-

edgement of the inclusion of women in the franchise

as a moment of historical significance for France, or,

indeed, as the result of a process and struggle that was

much older than the Resistance during the Second

World War. If anything, the period of Liberation

against which de Gaulle’s words were heard became

in itself the significant moment, signaling the ‘‘resto-

ration’’ of republican democracy after four years of

authoritarian Vichy rule. The enthusiasm with which

Vichy France was demolished and demonized effec-

tively allowed the Woman Question to be eclipsed.

Even in the fragmented and exiled feminist press of

Occupation vintage, there was no criticism of this

rather lackluster reception of women into the com-

munity of citizens. As Christine Bard writes, what

remained of the Conseil National des Femmes Franc�aises (CNFF) welcomed women’s inclusion in the

franchise without pushing for further civil reforms,

and seemed to share the sense that women had

earned the right to vote by their wartime suffering

and not through a longer suffragist struggle (Bard,

1995). Furthermore, the French press, like the Con-

seil National de la Resistance (CNR) charter of

March 1944, was characterized by a blind spot

where women’s suffrage was concerned, making

erroneous reference to the ‘‘re-establishment of uni-

versal suffrage’’ where none had existed previously

(Novick, 1968, p. 198; for example, O. Rosenfeld,

Le Populaire, 22 October 1945). As Sian Reynolds

has pointed out, such ‘‘gender-blindness’’ also

afflicts recent French scholarly discussions of the

franchise, and is evident in Pierre Rosanvallon’s

insistence in his work on using the term ‘‘universal

suffrage’’ to refer to the period before 1944 (Rey-

nolds, 1995, p. 212).

Joan Tumblety484

IFOP SURVEY

Throughout October 1944, the Institut Franc�aisd’Opinion Publique (IFOP) conducted an opinion

poll on the subject of women’s recent enfranchise-

ment, its curiosity aroused by Charles de Gaulle’s

speech at the Palais de Chaillot in September (see

Document 1). Despite Albert and Nicole Du Roy’s

scepticism about the value of these early IFOP

surveys, the IFOP polls provide compelling evidence

of attitudes towards women’s suffrage and civil

rights, and, indeed, later surveys are mobilized as

evidence in the work of these historians themselves

(Du Roy & Du Roy, 1994). Both Janine Mossuz-

Lavau and Claire Duchen have cited IFOP surveys in

their work, clearly putting some faith in the results as

a guide to political and social values and behavior

(Duchen, 1994; Mossuz-Lavau, 1995). Indeed, in the

1940s and 1950s IFOP claimed to have only a 2%

margin of error in their prediction of election results,

which perhaps explains the willingness of govern-

ment agencies in the same period to ask IFOP to

undertake surveys on their behalf (Dorsey, 1952).

The IFOP came into existence as a private body in

December 1938 and, from June 1939 onwards, pub-

lished a monthly bulletin of its results. The Occupa-

tion interrupted its work, but as early as August 1944

its researchers ventured into newly liberated Parisian

streets to test the opinion of the population on a

number of matters, such as the ongoing military

campaigns, the necessity of purging the Vichy and

collaborationist elite, and the re-election of Franklin

D. Roosevelt (IFOP, Bulletin, 1 October 1944). The

organization was keen to establish a ‘‘scientific’’

method for the interpretation of public opinion,

borrowing from the work of the American ‘‘pioneer,’’

George Gallup. Efforts were made to stratify the

population into its component sociological parts,

according to the results of the 1936 census, so that

interviewees were drawn representatively from social

groups according to sex, age, profession and urban or

rural status. Each question was put to an average of

2500 people by way of an oral questionnaire, and it

was recognized by the institution that men not only

offered themselves more readily for interrogation, but

were more likely to hold a firm view on the topic in

question (IFOP, Bulletin, 1 January 1947). Not a great

deal is known about who conducted the surveys, but

along with other French institutional surveyors of

opinion IFOP was concerned that too many of its

interviewers were male and part time, especially in

the provinces (Dorsey, 1952). Whereas the national

press based in Paris largely overlooked the momen-

tousness of the introduction of universal suffrage, the

pollsters at IFOP were intrigued enough to gauge the

responses of French men and women in some detail.

The results were published in November 1944, in an

issue devoted exclusively to the Woman Question,

but received no discernible coverage in the wider

press.

According to the results of the survey, popular

responses to the inclusion of women in the franchise

were generally supportive but ambivalent, confirming

later historians’ suspicions that the advent of women

to citizenship status fell short of revolutionizing

attitudes towards their place in French society (All-

wood & Wadia, 2000; Duchen, 1994). The results

suggest that while almost two thirds of respondents

agreed with the enfranchisement of women, some

31% of the sample were either opposed to the granting

of voting rights to women or would have preferred to

stipulate conditions, such as that women should vote

only in cases where women were heads of household.

The measure of support accorded the enfranchisement

of women was therefore hardly overwhelming, and

popular responses suggest more than a lingering

adherence to the kind of familial social model that

had inspired republican, Vichy and resistance enthu-

siasm for the family vote. As Paul Smith and others

have pointed out, the family vote probably came

closest to implementation in 1939 as part of the

revised family code of the same year, and it had been

envisaged as part of the never delivered Vichy con-

stitution under the Occupation (Smith, 1996).

Women were more openly in favor of their

enfranchisement than were men: 69% of women

approved of the extension of the franchise, compared

with only 58% of men. In line with the wider socio-

logical assumptions of IFOP, however, women (18%)

were twice as likely as men (9%) not to profess an

opinion on the matter. More than a third of the sample

supported women’s voting rights as a matter of

principle, frequently citing that women should have

the same rights as men, that the sexes were equal or

that the opinion of women should be heard. Only a

small minority of responses cited that their support

for the measure was based on political exigencies, or

that France should follow the example set by other

European countries, or that women were in fact more

competent than men in passing judgement on certain

political questions. Ironically, then, these popular

responses suggest something of the inverse of the

responses generally found in the press: newspaper

coverage of the issue in late summer 1944, and

indeed throughout 1945 as explored below, was most

likely to comment favorably on women’s instinctive

understanding of some social issues, or that they

deserved the vote in recompense for war work, or,

Responses to Women’s Enfranchisement in France 485

less frequently, that France was completing the

process of women’s enfranchisement begun by other

European nations. There was little acknowledgement

that women’s voting rights were an inalienable

human right.

The survey also encountered men and women who

declared their opposition to the measure. Disgruntle-

ment was most commonly found among young

unmarried men (single, widowed or divorced),

whereas most support for the innovation was to be

found among middle-aged widows and divorcees.

Among those who did not support women’s voting

rights, the most cited reason for dissent was ‘‘reasons

of principle.’’ Only 7% believed that women’s lack of

civic education should disqualify them from the

franchise, and less than 3% adhered to the anti-

suffrage rationale so frequently mobilized by the

Radical party in the interwar period, that, given the

vote, women would destabilize the republic by exer-

cising their allegiance to clericalism (Hause &

Kenney, 1984). In this case, the popular response

again suggests the inverse of the anti-suffrage position

put forward in the debates of the Consultative Assem-

bly that took place in Algiers on 24 March 1944. In

that forum, no categorical hostility to the principle of

women’s enfranchisement was voiced, and the sub-

stantial objections to women’s right to vote in the

forthcoming elections centered on such practical dif-

ficulties as the impossibility of devising complete

electoral lists in time or fears of the suspension of

republican legality. Curiously, too, no significant

mention was made among the IFOP respondents of

the fact that women were to use their new-found

citizenship status to vote in an election before the

return to France of deportees and prisoners of war,

despite the fact that, as outlined elsewhere in this

article, that objection was widely cited both in the

Consultative Assembly and the national press. In fact,

those men and women interviewed by IFOP in Octo-

ber 1944 appeared not to draw the distinction, initially

requested by the Commission in Algiers, between

women’s right to vote in principle and their right to

vote in the first post-Liberation elections in France.

At any rate, more than half of those surveyed

(54%) believed that women’s vote would make a

difference to the results of the forthcoming elections,

with slightly more women than men anticipating that

their inclusion in the franchise would change the

result. Significantly, in contrast to pre-war assump-

tions and fears, especially those evoked by the anti-

clerical Radicals, the men and women questioned did

not believe that the enfranchisement of women would

swing party politics to the Right: twice as many

people (14%) believed the result of the next election

would move leftwards, with only 7% anticipating a

swing towards the Right. This popular belief that

post-Liberation politics would witness a return to a

socially democratic ethos continued into the months

of the elections themselves. A poll conducted exclu-

sively among women in February 1945 revealed that

44% of women believed, in general, that friends and

relatives would be voting for the Left in the forth-

coming municipal elections of April 1945, and twice

as many women thought that their husbands’’ polit-

ical opinions had moved towards the Left as towards

the Right (IFOP, Bulletin, 1 August 1945). The

results of the municipal elections themselves con-

firmed this leftwards gravitation, as the PCF made

something of an electoral coup by achieving forty per

cent of the vote, and that leftward trend was rein-

forced in subsequent legislative elections. As it

happened, however, the pre-war assumptions about

women’s ‘‘natural’ conservatism were partly borne

out by these election results. In the immediate post-

war period, women, although clearly republican

rather than clerical or monarchist in political senti-

ment, were more likely than men to vote for the

centrist Christian Democratic MRP than for either the

Communist PCF or the Socialist SFIO (Duchen,

1994).

DEBATES IN THE NATIONAL PRESS

The issue of women’s voting rights received

renewed attention in the national press in the period

of the municipal elections of April 1945, the first to

be held in France since 1936, and the elections to

the Constituent Assembly in October 1945. In leftist

as well as conservative organs, it was not uncom-

mon for a discussion of women and citizenship to

appear on the first or second page of these short,

resource-strapped broadsheets, jostling for space

alongside both European news and the sports col-

umn. There was, in the press coverage, a simulta-

neous celebration of women’s electoral participation

and a focus on the problems that those new suffrage

rights engendered. It was widely feared that wom-

en’s newfound electoral voice would skew the

political voice of the nation, not least because the

April 1945 elections were held before the mostly

male deportees had returned to France. Indeed, for

the April 1945 municipal elections, Paris had

716399 male electors and 860751 female ones

(Ce Soir, 21 April 1945; Liberation, 28 April

1945). The sudden inclusion of women in the

franchise was also credited with causing serious

bureaucratic problems which led to electoral irregu-

larities, and, finally, there was a widespread fear of

Joan Tumblety486

the implications of women’s abstention from the

voting process altogether.

Indeed, all political parties would have preferred

that the elections wait until the return of POWs and

other deportees. Significantly, however, and in line

with its broader commitment to the purges of

Occupation-era elites, the Communist press tem-

pered this fear of a distorted electorate by suggest-

ing that what would skew the results of the April

1945 elections more than women’s vote, was the

vote of those parliamentarians who had voted full

powers to Petain in 1940 (L’Humanite, 18 April

1945). Alone among the major political parties of

this period, the PCF and SFIO wanted the municipal

elections to go ahead as soon as possible, although

they were keen to assert that the results of these first

elections should be deemed provisional in light of

the absence of over 2 million deportees.2 Interest-

ingly, and perhaps due to an expectation that women

would vote for the Right, the conservative press was

less likely to espouse the view that the results of

these municipal elections should be provisional. In

any case, by the national election of October 1945

the problem of the validity of the results was no

longer raised because the majority of deportees had

since returned to France.

The ‘‘problem’’ of women’s voting rights was

raised in the press in other ways. In particular, all

newspapers were alive to the bureaucratic problems

encountered in the electoral process and the oppor-

tunities for corruption that might be occasioned by

them. In some quarters, the administrative chaos

that accompanied the elections of 1945—some

people were sent two electoral cards, cards were

sometimes issued to the deceased, there were

omissions—was attributed to the sudden inclusion

of women in the electorate (L. Gabriel-Robinet in

Le Figaro, 30 April 1945; M.G. in Le Figaro, 20

October 1945). Only the Communist press, perhaps

keen to expose possible ‘‘electoral sabotage’’ on the

part of Vichy hangers—on, was eager to blame the

Seine Prefecture for the incompetence (L’Humanite,

30 April 1945). The readiness with which these

journalists attributed electoral irregularities to the

process of including female names on the electoral

list is striking, not only because administrative

discontinuities occasioned by the recent change of

regime were inevitable, but because the April 1945

elections were the first to be held in France for

nine years and thus necessitated the inclusion, too,

of all young men under thirty years of age as first-

time voters. Yet this ‘‘youth vote’’ was rarely

constructed as a problem in the press of this period

(Gerard Jaquet, Le Populaire, 25 April 1945).

Furthermore, some lingering uneasiness about

the ‘‘unknown quantity’’ of the female vote was

expressed in the Liberation-era newspapers, as were

continuing fears about the dangers of women’s

abstention from voting altogether (J-M. Garraud,

La Croix, 20–21 April 1945). In the event, these

newspapers, especially those on the Left, expressed

a clearly articulated relief at the end of April 1945

when women demonstrated their civic credentials by

voting in large numbers. It was the conservative

Catholic press, however, that did more than any

other to persuade women to vote in the first place.

For Christians, wrote Pierre L’Ermite in La Croix,

voting is an ‘‘absolute duty’’ and abstention an

irresponsibility that leads to evil. Women, compris-

ing over 60% of the electorate in April 1945, should

realize that on the issues of family, children,

divorce, schooling and religion, they have invalu-

able opinions that should be expressed at the ballot

box (Pierre L’Ermite, La Croix, 30 April 1945; L.

Merklen, La Croix, 24 April 1945). In a sense, this

Catholic concern with women’s voting habits was a

function of a greater conservative fear about the

possibility of Communist rule in France, and a

symptom of the fact that the clerical question had

made a brief reappearance on the political agenda in

April 1945 because the Consultative Assembly in

Algiers had decided to continue temporarily the

government subsidies to Catholic schools initiated

by the Vichy regime. After the relatively high

abstention rates in the cantonal elections of Septem-

ber 1945, the Catholic press made a concerted effort

to woo its readers to the polling station for the

national elections in October so that a clerical and

conservative position might be strengthened. As

Franc� ois Mauriac opined from the pages of Le

Figaro, whatever the practical difficulties that pre-

vent a mother or workingman from voting, it should

be remembered that communists tend not to abstain

(F. Mauriac, Le Figaro, 18 October 1945). Despite

the undeniable success of the PCF at the polls in

1945, the electoral results of that year returned also

a large number of socially conservative Christian

Democrats (MRP). On both Left and Right, then,

initial fears about how women might have

‘‘skewed’’ the results and threatened the establish-

ment of democracy, either by inviting clerical rule or

opening the door to communist dictatorship, were

laid to rest (Le Figaro, 23 October 1945; Simone

Esprels, Front National, 22 October 1945; Pierre

Limagne, La Croix, 19 October 1945).

In general, the press coverage of these elections

suggests a curiously paradoxical attitude to women’s

newfound suffrage rights: the female citizen is at once


invisible and fetishised. As Bruno Denoyelle argues,

popular representations of voting women in this

period stress their imagined otherness, while the

official pronouncements of the Provisional Govern-

ment rarely singled women out for special attention

(Denoyelle, 1998). Women, including Mme de

Gaulle (Le Figaro, 30 April 1945; Liberation, 30

April 1945), who ventured out to vote in the elections

of 1945 were likely to find themselves photographed

and interviewed by journalists, especially if they were

sporting the most common accoutrements of the

female sex-shopping bags and children. Reporters

remarked with glee that women often went to the

voting booth with bread sticks under their arms or

voted en famille, sometimes sitting kids down nearby

while they went into the voting booth alone (P.

Carriere, Ce Soir, 1 May 1945; O. Rosenfeld, Le

Populaire, 22 October 1945; Henri Calet, Combat, 30

April 1945; Simone Bertrand, Le Figaro, 22 October

1945). Juxtaposed with this image of the domestic

voter was the phenomenon of the voting nun. Car-

melite nuns allegedly left their cloisters for the first

time in twenty years in order to vote, and some sisters

of Saint Vincent de Paul, whose severe dress was

unknown to the public, needed special dispensation

to leave the convent (Liberation, 30 April 1945;

Pierre Limagne, La Croix, 2 May 1945; P. Carriere,

Ce Soir, 1 May 1945). This insistence on the voting

nun perhaps implies the unspoken strangeness of the

female voter in the eyes of the press.

At any rate, these anecdotal observations of how

women voted often demonstrate a barely disguised

contempt for some elements in the female electorate.

The socialist press sneered at ‘‘one young blond’’ in an

extravagant fox fur, who revealed, when questioned,

that she had unwittingly voted for two former Vichy

supporters (R. Guillien, Le Populaire, 30 April 1945).

An ‘‘enormous woman,’’ with a made-up face and pale

pink scarf, looking ‘‘like the madam of a maison

close,’’ hailed the merits of the MRP, showing, for

the journalists of Ce Soir, that women were natural,

unthinking conservatives (23 October 1945). It should

be noted that the association of women with collabo-

ration—and of prostitutes with national betrayal—was

widespread at the Liberation (Adler, 1999). The press

coverage of the elections in the national press of 1945

evoked the same trinity of figures that appeared

throughout the period in the caricatures of the satirical

publication Le Canard Enchaıne—the housewife, the

nun and the ‘‘prostitute’’—which, as Bruno Denoyelle

argues, contained more than a hint of misogyny

(Denoyelle, 1995, 1998).

Despite drawing attention to the novelty—indeed

the oddity—of the female voter in this way, the press

was singularly reticent in framing the voting process

as part of the historic introduction of universal

suffrage in a way that would make visible women’s

previous exclusion from political rights. Little critical

reference was made in the national press to the fact

that, although the French were among the first to

enfranchise all men (1792 in deed, and after 1848 by

constitutional right), they were among the last nations

in Europe to include women in the category of

‘‘active citizens.’’3 Indeed, Daniel Mayer’s radio

broadcast, in an attempt to link the Socialist party

with an engrained revolutionary republican tradition,

reminds his listeners that 1789 brought liberty to

France while the Vichy regime tried to take it away.

What is omitted is any reference to the fact that the

French Revolution, in practice and constitutionally,

formalized women’s exclusion from the franchise for

the first time in French history (D. Mayer, radio

broadcast reproduced in Le Populaire, 21 October

1945). Similarly, Leon Blum took the credit for

introducing women to public life in 1936 (by includ-

ing three women in junior positions in the Cabinet),

without commenting on the irony or injustice that

they were simultaneously denied voting rights (Leon

Blum, editorial in Le Populaire, 12 October 1945).

The Leftist newspapers of the Liberation era were

keen, then, to declare themselves the allies of a

feminist cause, but did not wholly confront the way

in which the Republic was ‘‘built on a set of princi-

ples which wrote women out of . . . public life’’

(Reynolds, 1986, p. 113).

Moreover, instead of addressing women as citi-

zen-individuals, the press of both Left and Right

addressed them as citizen-mothers. Indeed, both

communists and conservatives in 1945 believed that

women’s interests and expertise grew out of their

familial tasks and that, in addition, their greater

suffering under the Occupation had provided a kind

of political tutelage in which they had grown attuned

to the ‘‘serious obligations of life’’ (W. d’Ormesson,

Le Figaro, 13 April 1945). Women’s close involve-

ment in the provisioning crisis of the 1940s, whether

as menageres standing in queues for food or as

demonstrators against rationing, was believed to have

constituted a good civic education that would stand

women in good stead in these years of Liberation

politics, when politics was more closely associated

than ever before with ‘‘women’s issues’’: the prob-

lems of ravitaillement and housing which received so

much press attention during 1944 and 1945 (La

Croix, 23 October 1945; Claude Martial, Liberation,

13 October 1945; Simone Esprels, Front National,

14/15 October 1945). In October 1945, L’Humanite

carried an almost daily front-page series of illustrated

Joan Tumblety488

articles on the problems of depopulation and family

welfare (Germaine Vigneron, L’Humanite, 7 –17

October 1945), and women were in general expected

to play a leading role, as they had before 1940, in the

crusade against TB and alcoholism (Wladimir d’Or-

messon, editorial in Le Figaro, April 1945). It is

ironic that this recognition of women’s important

social role and its implicit understanding that political

activity is constituted by a wider range of activities

than merely standing for office, served only to cement

conservative and traditional notions of women’s place

in family and professional life. Yet such assumptions

were often shared by women themselves and explain

why it was issues pertaining to daily life that did most

to mobilize women for political action both before

and during the Liberation (Diamond, 1995; Koreman,

1999; Schwartz, 1999).

DEBATES IN THE WOMEN’S PRESS

How did women and the women’s press of the

Liberation period respond to the introduction of

universal suffrage? Perhaps the most important organ

in this respect was the publication of the Union des

Femmes Franc�aises (UFF), the communist-sponsored

organization that grew out of the clandestine struggle

under the Occupation and which could boast around

half a million members by the late 1940s, not all of

them communists (Bard, 1995). A reading of the UFF

organ, Femmes Franc�aises, sends us mixed signals:

on the one hand, a momentous change was antici-

pated and welcomed in the political sphere by the

inclusion of women in the franchise, yet the interests

of the UFF suggest that culturally and socially the

problems of reconstruction were deemed to override

those of individual emancipation, and a return to

‘‘family life’’ was envisioned. This ambivalence

was partly a function of the views of the communist

leadership itself. On his return to France from the

USSR, PCF leader Maurice Thorez addressed 25000

Parisian women in the Velodrome d’Hiver, calling on

women primarily in terms of their social role as

mothers and promising increased family allowances,

support for large families, an end to food shortages,

better distribution of shoes for children, and the

chance to improve the moral tone of French youth

(L’Humanite, 12 April 1945). It was only female PCF

candidate Jeannette Vermeersch who emphasized

that, as well as providing for families, the Commu-

nists, as ‘‘the party of integral emancipation for

French women,’’ would also establish equal pay for

equal work to encourage women to enter into full-

time paid employment and ensure higher salaries for

them (J. Vermeersch, L’Humanite, 12 April 1945 and

16 October 1945). As far as the Communist approach

to the Woman Question was concerned, then, there

was an implicit tension in the attempt to address

women simultaneously as individuals and as mothers

(Duchen, 1994).

The press of the UFF, however, unlike the main-

stream press in France, openly celebrated the momen-

tousness of the introduction of universal suffrage and

called for greater civil rights for women.4 Indeed, for

its contributors, the justification of women’s enfran-

chisement lay both in terms of human rights, and

‘‘deservedness’’ through resistance activity and the

privations of daily life under the Occupation. Femmes

Franc�aises showcased in its own first issue of the

Liberation period the much-touted words of FFI

communist Colonel Rol-Tanguy, who is reported to

have said during the summer of 1944 that ‘‘[w]omen

have proved their worth: they’ve shown that they are

capable of exercising all civil, economic, political

rights, and justice must put them on the same footing

as men.’’5 In other words, these female voices in the

press of 1944 echoed the grounds on which Grenier

had defended his amendment in the Consultative

Assembly in March 1944, and help to explain how,

however erroneously, it became a commonplace

scholarly and popular assumption after 1944 that

women in France had received the vote for their role

in the Resistance.

At the same time, there was a disinclination to link

the granting of suffrage rights explicitly to any kind

of feminist struggle. References were made to the

early feminists of the French Revolution, who first

articulated the demand for the vote, thus providing a

historical perspective on women’s franchise that was

completely missing from the mainstream press.6 Yet

it was recognized by these authors that women

themselves had not agitated for the vote during the

war by staging ‘‘puerile demonstrations,’’ but, rather,

that ‘‘[t]he right to vote has fallen into [our]. . . handslike a ripe fruit’’ as a reward for services rendered to

la patrie (See Document 2). Indeed, the views

expressed here echo the conservatism of feminists

of the Third Republican period who were anxious not

to agitate for rights in an ‘‘unfeminine’’ manner

(Hause and Kenney), and are in keeping with what

has been described by scholars as ‘‘feminisme ordi-

naire,’’ a desire to exercise the rights of citizenship

without necessarily linking their acquisition to a

process of feminist struggle (Mossuz-Lavau, 1995,

p. 155).

Furthermore, Femmes Franc�aises explicitly linked

discussions about women’s civic training to the

demands of national—and familial—reconstruction.

The publication first attempted to convince women of


the legitimacy of their new rights and to counter their

tendency to be somewhat reluctant citizens: letters

from women readers in November 1944 expressed

the opinion that women might lose their femininity if

they voted, or that party politics continued to be

extraneous to women’s concerns and interests (Fem-

mes Francaises, 2 and 9 November 1944). Oral

sources, too, point to a feeling of widespread political

inadequacy, with many women either continuing to

see politics as ‘‘men’s business’’ (Document 2) or to

experience the suffrage not so much as a right but a

weighty obligation (Denoyelle, 1998, p. 86; Dia-

mond, 1995). Femmes Francaises urged women to

see that the issues of food were political, making clear

the links between women’s daily lives and politics:

women should vote, they argued, because it is poli-

ticians who control the economic relations that deter-

mine the price of vegetables (Femmes Francaises, 2

November 1944).

Indeed, Femmes Francaises elaborated a famili-

alist, rather than an individualist, vision of women’s

rights and duties in this period, and, as Document 3

demonstrates, sought to mobilize women around the

issues most familiar to them while, at the same time,

echoing broader communist calls for a thorough

purge of Vichy elites and an acceptance of a uni-

cameral political system. Women, in general, were

instructed to prepare for the return of POW husbands

and other deportees, and become involved in organ-

izations seeking to regularize food supplies. In the

smallest hamlet women must form welcome centers,

making them ‘‘havens of comfort,’’ for the return of

the ill and weak deportees.7 Women were called upon

to force local authorities to purge Vichy officials and

other collaborators in a way that suggests that the

issues of epuration and ravitaillement were inter-

twined: it was Vichy officials, still in positions of

local power, who were deemed to be obstructing the

food supplies and preventing the normalization of

daily life in time for the return of the ‘‘absents’’

(Femmes Francaises on 7 December 1944). Ger-

maine Henaff writes that each day the problem of

the health of ‘‘our own’’ weighs on the women of

France: if transport difficulties are blamed for the

disruptions to supply, how can the authorities explain

that apples are able to come from Normandy but not

cheese or butter? Too much of what arrives in Paris

goes onto the black market and today the food

problem is in the hands of those who had power

under Vichy (Femmes Francaises, 16 November

1944). In keeping with this emphasis on women as

wives and mothers, the Femmes Francaises publica-

tion included many articles on the private sphere of

children and fashion, and also published romantic

fiction in its pages. Whatever the overt call to

political engagement in this organ, its pervasive

insistence on women’s special role in the home helps

to explain the appeal and the purchase of the later

1950s emphasis on domesticity (Duchen, 1991).

This conviction about women’s role in the recon-

struction of France was reflected in public opinion

during 1945. In August 1945, IFOP published a

special issue on women’s views on post-Liberation

politics and society, which suggested that women’s

own views were predominantly family-centered, and

that their efforts were best concentrated on repairing

the ‘‘moral equilibrium’’ of the country that had been

severely damaged during the war. There was a con-

viction that the war had exacerbated the depopulation

crisis, and almost two thirds of women (61%) believed

that the ideal family should now have three or more

children (IFOP, Bulletin, 1 August 1945). Later IFOP

opinion polls, taken among both men and women,

revealed that while 84% of men and women (the figure

was 90% among women) believed that women should

earn the same salary as men for the same job, 71%

(69% among women) replied that it would be better if

women devoted themselves solely to the home (IFOP,

Bulletin, 16 January 1947). In any case, while almost

two thirds of the sample believed a woman could

feasibly become a judge in post-war society, only 18%

thought it was appropriate that she become President

of the Republic, indicating that women’s new citizen-

ship status did not revolutionize attitudes towards

women in family or professional life.

CONCLUSION

Certainly, the Liberation period did not witness a

flourishing of feminist groups or concerns, despite the

occasional promises of ‘‘integral emancipation’’

made on the part of the PCF. It would seem that,

instead, the demands of reconstruction overtook those

of personal emancipation, as food and children

assumed a temporary predominance in party politics.

It is ironic that female activists, whether within or

without the French Resistance, responded to this

enfranchisement by calling on women to fashion

themselves as good citizens by being dutiful mothers

and involved in issues to do with ravitaillement,

although it was precisely because national politics

was preoccupied with such ‘‘local’’ concerns in the

1940s that women’s heightened political activity was

achieved (Diamond, 1999; Koreman, 1999). Indeed,

women themselves, whether the contributors to the

politicized Femmes Franc�aises magazine or those

whose opinions were solicited by interviewers, both

in the Liberation period and much later, were over-

Joan Tumblety490

whelmingly ready to accept that the cares of the

family home fell uniquely to them. The rather con-

servative social agenda that was shared by politicians

of Left and Right in the post-1944 era and which

emphasised that women’s paid work was secondary

to their primary duty of procreation appears to have

been supported, perhaps even welcomed, by women

themselves.

Furthermore, the response to women’s enfran-

chisement by politicians and the press reveals a

continued uneasiness about the worthiness of

women to be voting citizens, in a way that demon-

strates that the ghosts of Radical senator Alexandre

Berard’s ‘‘fourteen points’’ against women’s suffrage

had not been completely laid to rest, even on the

crest of the Liberation wave in 1944 – 1945.

Ingrained notions of women’s political ineptitude

persisted, perhaps explaining the contradictory evi-

dence of the Liberation period public opinion sur-

veys, which show that men and women both wanted

change and no change at the same time. In the

words of the surveyors of popular opinion, ‘‘there is

an egalitarian attitude, and an anti-egalitarian atti-

tude’’ (IFOP, Bulletin, 16 January 1947). It would

seem, then, that the Liberation period was marked

by a curious kind of doublethink in relation to

women’s position in society. Women were wel-

comed by the press and politicians as voting citizens

but simultaneously addressed as mothers rather than

as individuals.

Document 1

Bulletin d’Information de l’Institut Franc�ais d’Opinion Publique, no. 3, 1 November 1944

I Women’s vote

Women are going to vote. The President of the Provisional Government of France announced it in his first

speech to the nation, on 12 September 1944 at the Palais de Chaillot. The Government has fixed the date of the

municipal and cantonal elections for next February, and has decided that women will be eligible to vote and to

stand as candidates under the same conditions as men. How has this measure been received by the public?

There is a question on the principle of reform. Will the public think that women’s vote will in itself modify the

general political orientation of the country? There is a question on its political effects.

a) the principle of reform

Question: are you in favour of women’s voting rights

Response:

Women’s vote hasn’t left Parisians indifferent: only 4% of them did not have an opinion. A small number (3%),

in favour in principle of women’s voting rights, would nevertheless like to impose certain restrictions: only

women who are heads of family should vote, or women should only vote on specific questions for which their

competence is not contested: the education of children or social problems. But the salient fact is that two thirds

of Parisians approve of women’s suffrage, whereas less than a third are hostile to it.

Sex, age and civil status are here the important factors in the differences of opinion. Women showed

themselves, more often than men, in favour of women’s suffrage.

Yes 64%

Yes, with conditions 3%

No 28%

No opinion 5%

Sex Yes No

Men 58% 34%

Women 69% 26%

Average 64% 28%


Unfavourable attitudes are more common among the young than among older people.

Differences of civil status cause a quite remarkable divergence of opinion: opposition to the reform is most

marked among single men and among widows and divorcees of both sexes [sic].

The reasons behind these antagonistic attitudes are divided as follows:

Reasons for being hostile:

Reasons for being in favour:

The reasons of principle are formulated in the following manner: 1. ‘Women have as many rights as men’:

18%. 2. ‘The sexes are equal’: 13%. 3. ‘The opinion of women should be expressed’: 6%.

It is especially on the grounds of justice, equality and liberty that the public is in favour of women’s suffrage

rights. This is, moreover, of a uniform nature: there is no significant difference that can be observed between

various categories of the population.

It should be noted, in order to situate the inquiry in its context (‘vivante atmosphere’), that according to

the nature of individuals or their personal experiences, one can see two opposed judgements on the female

character. For some, women are not very thoughtful and very easily influenced; they will vote as their

Age Yes No

20–34 58% 34%

35–49 63% 30%

50–64 68% 25%

Over 65 64% 25%

Civil status Yes No

Single men 50% 39%

Single women 66% 26%

Married men 63% 31%

Married women 66% 27%

Widowed or divorced men 48% 48%

Widowed or divorced women 74% 21%

General average 64% 28%

Reason of principle 11%

Political inaptitude of women 7%

Dangers of the female vote 3%

Other reasons 4% (of general total)

Reasons of princple 37%

Political opportunism 7%

Women are more competent on certain questions 5%

Reform is in danger 3%

Other reasons (most notably foreign examples) 3% (of general total)

Joan Tumblety492

husbands do, or not see beyond the personality of the candidate at election time. Others, on the contrary,

think that women are more measured and balanced, and more deserving of the vote than men.

Finally, it is remarkable that reasons of ‘rights’ are invoked twice as often as reasons of simple timeliness.

Nevertheless, in the comments, the very principle of universal suffrage is, on several occasions, called into

question.

b) the effects of the reform

Question: Do you believe that the vote of women will change the results of the next elections?

Response:

Slightly more than one person in ten did not respond to this question. Slightly more than one person in two

tends to think that women’s vote will have repercussions at the next elections.

Women prove to be more hesitant than men, especially when they do not have a profession. That is also the

case for aged subjects when compared to younger people.

The opinion that women’s vote will not change the elections is more often found among men than among

women, among young people and older people, more than among middle-aged subjects, finally, among those

with private means (rentiers) than among people with a profession.

By contrast, married people of both sexes are more likely to think that women’s vote will influence the results

of the elections.

Yes 54%

No 32%

Without opinion 14%

Sex Without opinion

Men 9%

Women 18%

General average 14%

Women’s vote will not change the results of the

next elections

Men 36%

Women 29%

Young (20–34 years of age) 36%

Elderly (over 65 years of age) 41%

Middle-aged (35–64 years of age) 29%

Private income 45%

Professionals 30%

Women’s vote will change the results of the

next elections

Married people 55%

Single people 48%

General average 54%


If the public thinks that the political representation of the country will change after the admission of women

into the franchise, it would be interesting to know in what sense they think it will change.

Question: In what sense will the vote of women change the results of the next elections?

Response:

The opinions are very divided. The dominant tendency is nevertheless to believe that the transfer of votes will

be towards the Left.

Women gave a verdict less often (16%) than men, especially if they did not have a profession (19%); that

was also the case for the older subjects (19%).

A shift towards the two extremes at once was forecast more often by young people (13%), executives

(cadres) and those in the liberal professions (17%); towards the centre by middle-aged people (15%);

towards the Left by workers (23%); towards the Right by the liberal professions (10%).

The percentage of the public that are advocates of women’s suffrage rights tend to believe in a shift towards

the centre and towards the Left; inversely, those who are not in favour of the reform expect rather that there

will be an electoral shift towards the two extremes and towards the Right. Thus, out of the 80 people who

were in favour of women’s voting rights out of every 100 who responded to the two questions, 53 thought

that there would be a shift towards the centre and Left; out of the 20 who were not in favour, a shift to the

extremes or the Right was forecast.

Are you in favour of women’s voting rights?

In what way will women’s vote change the results of the next elections?

Towards the Left 14%

Towards the centre 12%

Towards the two extremes at once 10%

Towards the Right 7%

Without opinion 11%

Total 54%

Yes No Total

Towards the extremes or Right 27% 11% 38%

Towards the centre or the Left 53% 9% 62%

Total 80% 20% 100%*

* Percentages calculated according to the total number of subjects who responded, as indicated above, to both questions.

Document 2

Femmes Francaises, 23 November 1944

‘What French women think of the vote’

By Mme E. Cotton

Director of research at La caisse nationale des sciences

So French women are going to vote. A long time after the English, Americans, Russians, they are finally gaining

the status of citizen and will henceforth no longer be thought of as little girls during international meetings. We

have known for some years that a Bill proposing women’s voting rights had been accepted by the Chamber of

Deputies, but also that the Senate never thought it opportune to consider the Bill and so the situation remained

unchanged. It’s that French men, like other Latin types, have taken a long time to see in women people who have

the same rights and duties as their brothers and their husbands. We have not forgotten the difficulty that women

Joan Tumblety494

have had in gaining the right to work, the safeguard of human dignity. The theatre, the press ridiculed in advance

female doctors, lawyers or professors. ‘A woman professor, we don’t know this monster’, a writer said fifty

years ago. As always, our pioneers have had serious difficulties to overcome. And yet, society has managed to

put up with these monsters and there have even been men brave enough to marry them. . .

The woman voter and the woman deputy will without doubt be celebrated in time, but already they’ve gained

expertise since a good number of French women have proved, over the course of these last four years, that they

can participate effectively in the Resistance, that is to say in the life of the country in all its aspects. The right to

vote, formerly inaccessible, has fallen into their hands like a ripe fruit.

A lot of women are at present surprised and a bit embarrassed by the gift that, in a great spirit of justice, the

government of General de Gaulle has just given to them. Some think ‘that they’re too old to start voting’, others

that ‘their children and the provision of food take up their time’, others, finally, shaped by a long tradition, find

that ‘elections are men’s business’.

Must we see in these attitudes proof of the indifference of French women to the vote? For myself, I see in them

above all the mark of women’s scrupulous character, the fear that their inexperience in political matters might

harm their country. In that, as in many areas, I think that this is a question of a fear of words and I would like

above all to convince overworked housewives that they can and should vote, because their opinions can be the

most precious.

It’s not a question of becoming involved in politics in the old sense of the word, but of uniting to serve the

country. We have to end the war, have our prisoners and our deportees returned, provide assistance to our cities

in ruins and our devastated countryside, ensure everywhere a normal life. None of these great problems is alien

to any French woman and everyone has the time to think about them, to turn them over in their heads again and

again during the interminable peeling of vegetables or the laborious mending of clothes. The practice of voting is

indeed a small thing when compared with this constant commitment to the real life of the country. In order to be

guided in their apprenticeship as citizens, French women will, moreover, enlist the help of women who have

already had cause to become involved in collectivities larger than the family: work groups, commercial

enterprises, educational establishments. They will have the example of our female municipal councillors.

To those who still doubt the point of giving women the vote, I remind you, finally, of the role of English women

during the war. In England, all women have had the vote since 1921. And because they have now had twenty

years to get used to becoming involved in the public life of their country, because they have been free citizens,

English women found it natural to be mobilized like English men.

Thus seven million women were involved in the war effort. No improvisation could have produced a similar

result at the required time. It is for us, French Women, to learn from this lesson.

E.C.

Document 3

Address to ‘Women of France’, Femmes Francaises, 24 August 1945

Women of France

Will our children be cold again this winter?

Will they have shoes to go to school in?

Will our little ones have milk?

They are the questions that women who are charged with caring for a family are asking.

One year after the Liberation you have a right to expect:

A real improvement in food supplies and the disappearance of the black market, a more complete purge and the

suppression of Vichy institutions;

A reduction in the cost of living in relation to salaries;


A rapid repatriation and a warm welcome for our prisoners and deportees.

Why has that not occurred?

Because the ministers do what they want.

Because they are not responsible.

Women do not want any more irresponsibility.

They have not forgotten that it was an irresponsible government, a government of decree laws, which led

France to the catastrophe of June 1940 and to the Petain regime.

They want to see a democratic Republic restored.

They want ministers to be responsible to the people’s elected representatives, before the Assembly that will be

elected in October [1945] and which will represent the Nation.

That’s why women will vote for:

THE SOVEREIGN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

ENDNOTES

1. The national newspapers surveyed for this article,grouped from Left to Right, are L’Humanite, Le Popu-laire, Front National, Liberation, Combat, Ce Soir, LeFigaro and La Croix. The period surveyed runs fromAugust 1944 to October 1945, from the inclusion ofwomen in the franchise to the first legislative elections ofthe post-Liberation era.

2. Party positions on this question were reproduced in LeFigaro, 20–23 April 1945. See G. Jaquet, Le Populaire,25 April 1945 and D. Mayer, Le Populaire, 28 April 1945and 29 April 1945; Le Populaire, 30 April 1945, p. 2;Georges Cogmot, L’Humanite, 18 April 1945; editorial inCombat, 12 April 1945; Liberation, 18 April 1945;Fernand Fontenay, Ce Soir, 29 April 1945.

3. One exception is J-M. Garraud’s article in La Croix, 25April 1945, which mentions that France figured amongsuch countries as Peru, Liberia, Saudi Arabia and Afgha-nistan in excluding women from suffrage rights, a state ofaffairs described as shocking and unjustified. Another isthe article by Sabine Berritz for Combat on 19 April 1945,which reminds readers that French women are voting afterso many other European women have already beenenfranchised.

4. The women’s press, however, could be just as guilty as themainstream press for its ‘‘blind spot’’ on the question ofsuffrage. An article on the CNR charter mentions ’the re-establishment of universal suffrage’. Femmes Francaises,28 September 1944.

5. Femmes Francaises, first issue, September 1944; alsoL’Humanite, 31 August 1944. Local press in the prov-inces also welcomed women into the national communityon the grounds that their war work made them eligible forcitizenship status. See Koreman (1999).

6. D. Aury writes of a ‘‘golden legend’’ and ‘‘symbolicfigures’’ provided by the likes of Olympe de Gouges,Rose Lacombe and Theroigne de Mericourt, FemmesFranc�aises, 26 October 1944. See also Jean Bruhat inFemmes Franc�aises, 13 July 1945, in which women’scontributions to the cahiers de doleance is explored.

7. Femmes Franc�aises, 15 February 1945. The idea thatwomen were uniquely placed to solve the problem ofravitaillement was adopted by the 33 women whowere elected deputies in 1945. See Foottit, Hilary

(1995). The First women deputes: ‘‘les 33 glorieuses?’’In H.R. Kedward and Nancy Wood (Eds.), The Lib-eration of France: image and event (pp. 129–141).Oxford: Berg.

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