The Limits of Suffragist Behavior

THE RIGHTS OF MAN, wrote Parrhisia (Blanche Cremnitz) in 1906, have triumphed by revolution. The superiority of feminism will be to secure the rights of women by evolution, without appeal to brute force.' Virtually all French suffragists shared this opinion and confined their behavior accordingly. From Hubertine Auclert's founding of the first women's suffrage society in France in 1876 to the Senate's defeat of the suffrage bill in 1922, French women adhered to a strategy of legalism: pursuit of the vote through obedience to the law and respect for bourgeois standards of behavior. On the eve of World War I there were perhaps fifteen active suffragists in France, who claimed an avant-garde of five hundred thousand on the basis of a 1914 newspaper poll. The French affiliate of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the Union Francaise pour le Suffrage des Femmes (UFSF), accounted for most of the movement with twelve members. Parrhisia, a member of the UFSF executive committee, typified their moderation. Approximately two dozen smaller organizations also campaigned for the vote. The limited and sporadic militancy in French suffragism came from the ranks of Auclert's Suffrage des Femmes and Solidarite des Femmes. No more than two hundred and fifty women from these organizations participated in all militant activities combined. Militant demonstrations-defined as any direct action such as a parade or an outdoor rally-rarely attracted fifty participants.2 Auclert went beyond strict legalism as early as 1880 (when she refused to pay

Democracy · Legalism (Western philosophy) · Militant · Parade · Political science · Politics · Suffrage · Universal suffrage · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law

• Elizabeth van Dorp and the Women’s Question at the Intersection of Bourgeois Ideals and Liberal Economics

  Open Access•Erwin Dekker, Willem Cornax•OEconomia•2022

  Incluir item

• Retrospective on the special Issue of Third Republic/Troisième République (1977) “Aspects of the Woman Question during the Third Republic”, 40th anniversary, papers collected by Karen Offen

  Open Access•Karen Offen•Genre & histoire•2020

  Incluir item

• Citizens All? Citizens Some! The Making of the Citizen

  Open Access•Immanuel Wallerstein•Comparative Studies in Society…•2003

  Incluir item

• Clothing Behavior as Non-Verbal Resistance

  Diana Crane•Fashion Theory•1999

  Incluir item