Hubertine Auclert

Hubertine Auclert ([y.bɛʁ.tin o.klɛʁ]; France, 10 April 1848 – Paris, 4 August 1914) was a leading French feminist and a campaigner for women's suffrage.

Early life

Born in the Allier département in the Auvergne area of France into a middle-class family, Hubertine Auclert's father died when she was 13 and her mother sent her to live and study in a Roman Catholic convent. As a young girl she planned to become a nun but left the convent at 16. Estranged from her mother, she lived with her uncle for a time but had to return to the convent a few years later. She left the convent for good in 1869 and moved to Paris in 1873. There, the ousting of Emperor Napoleon III and the establishment of the Third Republic opened the door to activism on the part of women, who began demanding changes to the Napoleonic Code to provide education and economic independence for women and the legalisation of divorce.

Political activism and feminism

Auclert, inspired by the high-profile activities of Maria Deraismes and Léon Richer, became involved with feminist work and eventually took a job as Richer's secretary. Influenced by her life in a Catholic convent, and like many of the leading republican feminists at the time, she was a militant anticlerical. While the main focus of the French feminist movement was directed towards changes to the laws, Auclert pushed further by demanding that women be given the right to run for public office and claiming that the unfair laws would never have been passed had the views of women legislators been heard. In 1876, she founded the Société le droit des femmes (The Rights of Women) to support women's suffrage, and in 1883, the organization formally changed its name to the Société le suffrage des femmes (Women's Suffrage Society).