Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic

Why did women in the land of liberte and egalite remain disenfranchised so much longer than women in most other western, and many eastern, countries? That is the question the authors address in this volume on women's suffrage in France. For at least five centuries before the Great Revolution of 1789, privileged French women of all estates voted in national elections. However, the course of occurrences through the revolutionary 1790s stripped all women of virtually all political rights. It was not until 1944 that France finally extended its "universal" suffrage to include women. Concentrating on the years between the late 1890s and the early 1920s, the authors review various factions in French society that influenced the issue of women and the vote. The volume traces  both ideological and institutional aspects of the suffrage movement.