Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1973. [12], During the baby boom period, feminism became a minor movement, despite forerunners such as Simone de Beauvoir, who published The Second Sex in 1949. But Jean-Denis Lanjuinais, a Girondin too, voiced his opposition against women’s voting rights. Women were not allowed to enter many professions including medicine and law. Although Men were more likely to be literate than women were, over one quarter of French women could read at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and towards the end of the century that number had doubled. Tout en mettant l’accent sur les spécificités sociales, politiques et institutionnelles des deux pays, cette comparaison sera aussi l’occasion de mettre en lumière des points communs, comme l’utilisation des idées sur les droits individuels par les partisans des droits des femmes dans les deux pays. The Société de Largentière in Ardèche granted voting rights to women but men still monopolized the highest elective positions in the executive board. Even though the history of the two countries, their respective institutions and systems of government, language and religion differ, one finds in both countries several points of similarity. The issue of political representation was thus at the heart of the American War of Independence. Here are some of the most powerful women of the 18th century (some born earlier than 1700, but important after), listed chronologically. Man; despotic man, first made us incapable of the duty, and then forbid us the exercise.” She also suggested the creation of “a senate of women”: [It] would fire the female breast with the most generous ambition, prompting [it] to illustrious actions. In 1974, Françoise d'Eaubonne coined the term "ecofeminism. Women’s clubs in Nancy, Le Mans and Beaumont also denounced the denial of their voting rights and of their capacity to “ratify the act” and wanted the legislators of the Convention to take them into account (Desan 12). Griselda Pollock, "To Inscribe in the Feminine". Due to the events of the late eighteenth century, a French national citizenship emerged, and many questions were raised about the implication and extent of this new citizenship. As the French constitutional proposition of 1791 contains no word on the political role that women could play in the country, some legislators, close to the Girondins faction, like Condorcet, tried to change this situation. The Rights of Women in 18th Century America On July 4, 1804, a group of young men in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, offered a series of toasts to commemorate the nation's independence. ), and women were relegated to an inferior social and political status. They wanted to have a more important political role in French society. Assembly the distinction between “passive” and “active” citizens was still existent (Blanc, “Charles de Villette” 137-38).