Peer-reviewed
Gender and republican citizenship in the French West Indies, 1848-1945†
The 1848, emancipation of slaves in the French West Indies also granted them French citizenship on the grounds of one of the three fundamental principles of the French Republic, the equality of men. This same principal also had an important impact on gender relations, for it attributed to women a subordinate legal status. Under the new legislation forged at the heart of the French state, women became ‘minors.' They were for example, excluded from one of the primary rights of a citizen, that of the vote. The spirit of the law thus reconstituted a state of civil opposition based not a judicial status (slave versus free) but on gender. This paper examines the impact of such changes on social relations, the extent to which they relegated women to the periphery of social movements and established a new social hierarchy stigmatizing the newly freed population.
Article, 2005
Slavery & Abolition, 26, 20050801, 233
2005