“Feminism is not, as some bad-faith opponents would have us believe, a program of demands emanating from a few embittered spinsters in celibacy and cantankerous wives disappointed in an unhappy union.” These words of the lawyer Maria Vérone in the 1930s say a lot about the Stations of the Cross which may have been that of women in France towards equality from 1789 to 2000, a period chosen by the exhibition “Parisiennes citoyennes”, at the Carnavalet museum. . An exhibition that is not intended to be a history of feminism, but rather that of collective emancipation. And even if the pioneers whose first names open the course are not forgotten, like Olympe de Gouges or Joséphine Baker, nothing would have changed without the mobilization of many anonymous people.
“The exhibition deals with collective movements, explains Catherine Tambrun, one of the three curators of the exhibition, with of course female figures that we bring out. But the goal was to show this incredible dynamic that allowed these feminist fights. The important work carried out for this exhibition at the Carnavalet museum focuses on pedagogy and contextualization. No photo, no leaflet is left without explanation and we inevitably learn things. In the 19th century, for example, women were forbidden to meet in groups of more than five. It was even considered not to allow them to read. And almost every societal advance has been followed by a brutal setback.
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Built both chronologically and by theme, the exhibition of course returns to the right to vote in 1945, the Veil law of 1975, the creation of the MLF, among other founding moments, with bridges between eras. “We talk about non-mixedness – but that’s been since 1832 – or intersectionality. And rape was denounced for the days of 1972 at Mutualité. The idea was to put a little history and also to put history back inside Paris. We are on Parisian territory and this story, we tell it from Paris.”
“Parisiennes citoyennes” ends in 2000. A deliberate choice on the grounds that certain social movements like MeToo, which appeared five years ago almost to the day, is not yet finished.
Parisian citizens! Commitments for the emancipation of women (1789-2000), until January 29, 2023 at the Carnavalet museum (Paris).