Women's Equality During
the French Revolution
The Fight for Women's Rights
During the French Revolution
The French Revolution brought with it many sweeping changes in the realm of human rights both to France and eventually the rest of the world. Through Enlightenment ideas, groups previously viewed as second-class citizens, and even those viewed as hardly human, gained greatly enhanced rights and even citizenship with all that this entailed. Amazingly with all the rights and privileges that were being recognized as inherent to various social groups, half the population was left with little or no improvement in their station. This, of course, refers to women. While there were those who fought for women's rights, such as Condorcet, Etta Palm D'Aelders, and Olympe De Gouges; these individuals were not homogenous in their attitudes about those freedoms that women ought to have. They also ran up against harsh opposition to the institution of any change in the role of women from that of pre-revolutionary France. Men such as Fabre d'Eglantine, Jean Baptiste Amar, and Gaspard Chaumette, though revolutionaries themselves, would be such opponents. A true man of the Enlightenment Condorcet used a system of reason and deduction to reach the conclusion that women, by virtue of their humanity, deserved the ability to participate in the political and social systems developing in France. His article, On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship, flows naturally from the premises outlined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He charges that France has "violated the principles of equality of rights by quietly depriving half of mankind of the right to participate in the formation of the laws." (pp 119) He sees this as the result of bad habits, and not the use of reason, on which enlightenment philosophers prided themselves. These habits, he would say, would have been acquired due to the rules of the old regime and not as a result of the biological differences between the sexes Undoubtedly habit
During the French Revolution
The French Revolution brought with it many sweeping changes in the realm of human rights both to France and eventually the rest of the world. Through Enlightenment ideas, groups previously viewed as second-class citizens, and even those viewed as hardly human, gained greatly enhanced rights and even citizenship with all that this entailed. Amazingly with all the rights and privileges that were being recognized as inherent to various social groups, half the population was left with little or no improvement in their station. This, of course, refers to women. While there were those who fought for women's rights, such as Condorcet, Etta Palm D'Aelders, and Olympe De Gouges; these individuals were not homogenous in their attitudes about those freedoms that women ought to have. They also ran up against harsh opposition to the institution of any change in the role of women from that of pre-revolutionary France. Men such as Fabre d'Eglantine, Jean Baptiste Amar, and Gaspard Chaumette, though revolutionaries themselves, would be such opponents. A true man of the Enlightenment Condorcet used a system of reason and deduction to reach the conclusion that women, by virtue of their humanity, deserved the ability to participate in the political and social systems developing in France. His article, On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship, flows naturally from the premises outlined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He charges that France has "violated the principles of equality of rights by quietly depriving half of mankind of the right to participate in the formation of the laws." (pp 119) He sees this as the result of bad habits, and not the use of reason, on which enlightenment philosophers prided themselves. These habits, he would say, would have been acquired due to the rules of the old regime and not as a result of the biological differences between the sexes Undoubtedly habit