Suchergebnisse

In Third Republic France (1870–1940) the directrice of a normal school for training women teachers was the most important woman representative of public primary education in each department. Her role was central to the republican educational project designed to bolster the establishment of a stable democracy after the Franco-Prussian War. The laicization of public education figured prominently in republican efforts to combat the old alliance of "throne and altar" favoring monarchy and religious instruction in public schools. Although laymen taught most boys in public schools by 1870, many nuns staffed separate girls' public schools. Thus an 1879 law mandated new normal schools to train lay teachers for France and Algeria. This study of 313 normal school directrices between 1879 and 1940, an important group of professional women not previously studied, explores challenges they faced and their responses. Often the target of political hostility, they defended republican schooling as they interacted with local notables and authorities. In an educational system divided by social class as well as by gender, they trained teachers for "children of the people" attending free primary schools, separate from the elite and less numerous secondary schools. Directrices were expected to be role models for women teachers and to emphasize women's duties as wives and mothers. Yet their careers exemplified an alternative to domesticity at a time of much debate about women's appropriate roles. Eventually some pushed against the boundaries of prevailing gender norms as they also joined professional, philanthropic, and feminist associations.

This history of professional women in positions of administrative responsibility illuminates women's changing relationship to the public sphere in France since the Revolution of 1789. Linda L. Clark traces several generations of French women in public administration, examining public policy and politics, attitudes towards gender, and women's work and education. Women's own perceptions and assessments of their positions illustrate changes in gender roles and women's relationship to the state. With seniority-based promotion, maternity leaves and the absence of the marriage bar, the situation of French women administrators invites comparison with their counterparts in other countries. Why has the profile of women's employment in France differed from that in the USA and the UK? This study gives unique insights into French social, political and cultural history, and the history of women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will interest scholars of European history and also specialists in women's studies

Abstract: Although recent historians of women reformers' contributions
to the development of welfare states have underscored the importance of
maternalist arguments for opening new roles to women in the public sphere,
French examples of women filling such roles have been neglected. The
careers of inspectresses general Pauline Kergomard and Olympe Gevin-Cassal
provide case studies that illustrate the link between maternalism and
women's access to positions of responsibility in public administration in
pre-World War I France. Kergomard, an inspectress general of nursery
schools, and Gevin-Cassal, an inspectress general of children's services
for the Ministry of the Interior, utilized maternalist discourse to defend
their positions and advocate new professional opportunities for other
women. Their secular outlooks suited the anticlerical Third Republic but
differentiated them from Catholic women. Gender-specific assignments
gave women a place in some inspectorates before 1914 but their numbers
were restricted.