Celebrity status couples recognition of individual achievement, the preeminent cultural ideal of Western societies since the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century, with the power of the media to disseminate visibility and publicity. This article demonstrates the relevance of celebrity culture well before film and the electronic media by historicizing and gendering it. The nineteenth-century French press offered its bourgeois readers a lively celebrity culture, notably featuring famous women more than men. The historicized and gendered concept of celebrity provides an important tool of cultural analysis since societies inevitably project upon celebrities—and expect them to perform—reigning myths about self-fulfillment and personal uniqueness. In the case of nineteenth-century France, there was a telling evolution in the representation of women celebrities from femmes fatales to proper women whose achievements outside the home were accepted as legitimate.

Historicizing and Gendering Celebrity Culture: Famous Women in Nineteenth-Century France

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By Book and School: The Politics of Educational Reform in France and Algeria during the Early Third Republic

This article discusses a double paradox: first, that the anarchists, so proud of their genuine commitment to anti-authoritarian politics, were yet so blind to the oppressive effects of patriarchy.However, secondly, within this generally male-orientated culture, there were still ambivalences in anarchist politics, with some pockets of real sympathy for feminism. Material is drawn from the experience of anarchists within Europe, 1840–1940.

Anarchism and feminism: a historical survey

Cette these s'interesse aux conditions de possibilite et aux modalites de defense de la cause des femmes dans l'appareil d'Etat, a partir d'une etude comparative des instances gouvernementales ayant pour mission officielle de promouvoir le statut des femmes en France et au Quebec depuis les annees 1960. Prenant appui sur les archives de ces instances ainsi que sur des entretiens avec leurs responsables et leur personnel, cette recherche releve d'une sociologie historique et comparative de l'Etat, integrant les apports de la sociologie du droit, du genre et des mouvements sociaux. Au-dela de l'analyse de la genese et de la consolidation des institutions etudiees, cette these s'interesse a la maniere dont la cause des femmes est definie en leur sein. De ce point de vue, l'analyse comparative permet d'identifier deux referentiels distincts de la politique a l'egard des femmes en France et au Quebec, l'un centre sur l'egalite professionnelle et l'autre sur l'autonomie economique. Ces differences, en tant qu'elles engagent des rapports distincts aux questions familiales, peuvent etre reliees a une economie differente des relations entre feminisme et familialisme dans chaque contexte socio-historique. La demarche comparative permet ainsi de montrer comment le rapport de force et les relations variables entre defenseurs de la cause des femmes et defenseurs de la cause de la famille, a l'interieur comme a l'exterieur de l'Etat (instances gouvernementales, mouvements sociaux, producteurs d'expertise), influencent la definition de la cause des femmes dans l'Etat. Cette influence est d'abord etablie a partir d'une analyse des orientations d'ensemble de la politique a l'egard des femmes, puis a partir d'une etude plus ciblee portant sur les interventions des instances etudiees dans les debats juridiques ayant trait aux consequences financieres du divorce (pensions alimentaires, prestation compensatoire, definition des regimes matrimoniaux).

https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00232869/document

La cause des femmes dans l'État : Une comparaison France-Québec (1965-2007)

This article places an important Argentine voluntary association, the
Beneficent Society, within the international context of women's
maternalist activism. Mead focuses on the efforts of elite women's
associations to influence government assistance to poor women
and children, arguing that such influence depended not only on
governmental structure, but also on women's ability to take advantage of
prevailing cultural and nationalist concerns. Comparing Argentina with
France and the United States, Mead weighs the importance of Catholicism,
medical corporations, immigration, and differences among local groups
of maternalists in explaining the success of the Beneficent Society
before 1920 and its subsequent marginalization.

Beneficient Maternalism: Argentine Motherhood in Comparative Perspective, 1880-1920

Traditional histories of the French Third Republic often overlook the extent to which concerns about the place of women and the health of the family influenced the course of government policy, particularly the direction of welfare reform. Combining the approaches of social and political history, this book offers a new perspective on women's lives in the Third Republic by looking at the attitudes, actions, and policies of the men who held political power. Addressing themes in the newly invigorated field of welfare-state history, contributors to this volume offer evidence that social reform in France began far earlier than is usually supposed and was a response by republican politicians and social activists to a declining population growth rate. As this demographic crisis inspired efforts to improve maternal and child health and increase the birth rate, motherhood was redefined as a public mission deserving of public support.

Elinor Ann Accampo

Papers

Gender and the politics of social reform in France, 1870-1914