Eighty years ago French women went to the polls for the first time, during municipal elections on 29 April 1945 – turning a centuries-long battle for equality into an historic reality.
Women in France secured the right to vote on 21 April 1944 through a wartime decree issued by the provisional government under General de Gaulle.
"Women are voters and eligible [for election] under the same conditions as men," it read.
But it took another year for women to be able to fully exercise that right for the first time, during municipal elections on 29 April and 13 May.
"I was happy and proud to vote," recalls Marcelle Abadie, now 105 years old. "For the first time, people were asking for my opinion. It really stayed with me," she told France's AFP news agency.
At polling stations, however, some men "looked at us as if we didn’t belong there. At that time, women were still seen primarily as housekeepers," she said.
The long road towards gender equality
"The right to vote was the result of a very long struggle," said historian Françoise Thébaud, a specialist in feminist movements.
The fight began with the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, written by Olympe de Gouges in 1791. Women demanded suffrage again during the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, though these were "individual demands or those of small groups," Thébaud notes.
Women such as Eugénie Niboyet, who founded France's first feminist daily newspaper, La Voix des Femmes ("The Women's Voice") and fellow campaigner Jeanne Deroin – who became the first woman to run for parliament in France – were key figures in moving things forward. In 1876 Hubertine Auclert founded the first French group dedicated to campaigning for women's suffrage.
"In France, as elsewhere, the organised suffragist movement only truly emerged in the 20th century," Thébaud notes.
New Zealand was the pioneer, granting women the right to vote in 1893, followed by Australia (1901), Finland (1906), Denmark (1915), Uruguay (1917), Germany (1918), the United States (1920), and the United Kingdom (1928).
Women's long battle to vote in France and the generations who fought it
Calm and serious
Before the municipal elections of April 1945, there was no national public campaign aimed at women, though the press provided practical advice on how to register on electoral rolls and how to vote, explains historian Anne-Sarah Bouglé-Moalic.
"Everything took place calmly and very seriously."
Turnout was high with around 9 million of the 13 million registered voters going to the polls. Many women saw the vote as a civic duty, even if they were not particularly interested in politics, Moalic adds.
Some, however, were already active and a few even ran for office and became mayors in towns like Les Sables-d'Olonne, Ouessant, Villetaneuse and Saint-Omer.
Studies show women's voting patterns were based more on social background than religious beliefs and that most couples voted for the same party. "Voting patterns were quite homogeneous within families, largely determined by social class, and this remains true to some extent today," notes Moalic.
Marcelle Abadie, then 25, married and working for an insurance company, was determined to form her own opinion. "I did my homework. I asked friends and listened to the radio," she said.
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Fundamental but not revolutionary
Women's suffrage was a landmark moment in French politics, but didn't usher in a revolution.
While election data wasn't officially collected until 1959, "several women" were elected mayors during those 1945 municipal elections and in 1947 there were 250 (the equivalent of less than 1 percent) according to the Senate website. Currently, just over 40 percent of local officials are women, but they make up only 20 percent of mayors.
In legislative elections held on 21 October, 1945, just 33 of the 586 lawmakers elected to the National Assembly were women. In 1958 there were eight. Now, just over 36 percent of MPs are women.
Drop in the number of female MPs shows ongoing battle for gender parity in French politics
"Of course, it was a fundamental reform, but it didn’t immediately make women equal to men," Thébaud points out. Civil rights inequalities persisted – it wasn’t until 1965 that a law allowed married women to work and open a bank account without their husband's consent.
Women’s emancipation came gradually. "The 1970s marked a major turning point with the emergence of a new feminist wave that secured women’s control over reproduction – a true revolution," says Thébaud.
Contraception was legalised in 1967, abortion was decriminalised in 1975, and in 2024, the right to abortion was enshrined in the French Constitution.
(with AFP)
