ABSTRACT
When war broke out in August 1914 French feminists were justified in thinking that their cause had made enormous progress since the turn of the century. It had obtained a number of legal reforms. Avant-Courrière’s campaign to allow women to be civil witnesses and to enable married women to keep their own earnings had led to legislation on these issues in 1897 and 1908. Feminist pressure, too, contributed to the enactment of the law of 27 March 1907, by which women were allowed to vote in elections to the Conseil de Prud’hommes (a kind of arbitration tribunal). Equally, the law of 1912 which introduced paternity suits had long been sought by the principal feminist organisations, even if it did not satisfy all their aspirations. Feminism itself had been transformed from a collection of small and disunited factions into a mass movement, and feminists could now envisage in a not-too-distant future the crowning of a decade of achievement with the introduction of women’s suffrage.
