Declarations on Women's Rights

Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen

The feminist manifesto Declaration des Droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne, written by Marie Gouze, who was known as Olympe de Gouges, was a response to the French Republic's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens (1789), which de Gouges challenged as not applying equally to women. She charged that this declaration fell short of equal treatment of the sexes in matters of law, marriage, property, employment, and education, and she called upon the National Assembly to work toward obtaining a woman's right to vote. She also placed particular emphasis on the need for an accessible and rigorous education for women.

De Gouges dedicated her tract to the queen, Marie Antoinette. In her preamble, de Gouges called for a national assembly of women to reform French society, based on laws of nature and reason. She set forth seventeen principles, articulated in her articles of equality. Among her assertions one finds that men and women should be equally admitted by ability to all honors, positions, and public employment. Freedom of speech and assembly should be guaranteed to women, and they should have the right to demand an accounting of the tax system. Article 16 declared the constitution of the state null if the majority of the people, including women, had not cooperated in drafting it. De Gouges ended with a social contract for women, proposing new laws of marriage and property.

Throughout her adult life, de Gouges wrote about the position of women, and the quality of their education, while other women of the period were addressing similar concerns in more tolerant societies. While education was a primary issue addressed in her many pamphlets, plays, novels, and political tracts appearing from 1788 to 1793, this remarkable and unpretentious woman, like the majority of females in her day, would not have received a rigorously academic or scholarly education. Education notwithstanding, she encouraged women of her time to become involved, to speak openly and publicly in support of her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. As Benoîte Groult theorizes in her 1986 work on de Gouges, the unfortunate reality is that the women who participate in revolutions are hardly ever awarded the benefits of change. De Gouges write in 1791 that if “woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do not disturb the legally established public order.” With these words, she foretold her own story. Because of her audacious, passionate, and radically conceptualized Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, and the sociohistorical context in which she lived, de Gouges was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by guillotine on November 3, 1793.

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