Olympe de Gouges — Declaration of the Rights of Woman
In September 1791, the playwright and activist Olympe de Gouges (born Marie Gouze, 1748) published the Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne — the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen. The text was a direct, article-by-article rewriting of the August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, substituting 'woman and man' for 'man' throughout and exposing the contradiction at the heart of revolutionary universalism: the declaration of universal liberty had explicitly excluded half the human race. De Gouges's opening sentence — 'Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question' — set the polemical register. Her Article I declared that 'Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights'; Article X stated that 'woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.' Article XI demanded the right of women to speak freely, including the right to declare the paternity of their children — a reference to the social invisibility of unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. De Gouges dedicated the Declaration to Queen Marie Antoinette and called on women to organise politically, form associations, and demand representation in the National Assembly. The dedication to the queen proved fatal: as the Revolution radicalised, association with the monarchy became capital treason. De Gouges was arrested in July 1793, tried, and guillotined on 3 November 1793 — the same week as Marie Antoinette. The revolutionary prosecutor reportedly noted that she had 'forgotten the virtues that belong to her sex.' The Declaration was largely ignored during the Revolution itself and for over a century afterwards. It was rediscovered by feminist historians in the 20th century and is now recognised as the founding document of modern political feminism, preceding Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) in its direct engagement with revolutionary political language.
- Year: 1791 CE
- Category: Political
