The Woman Question as a Social Issue in Republican France, 1870-1914

The eruption of the "woman question" as a subject for public discussion is a primary symptom of social disequilibrium within a given society. In times of stress, the cause of the second sex struts forth with predictable regularity, often hand-in-hand with the causes dear to other sectors of social justice,; those who claim to be ill-treated because of their serial or economic class, their race, or their religion. In the nineteenth century, the woman question, like its companions, become a concern common to most countries in the Western world, on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a manifestation of the social dislocations
and consequent unrest that accompanied the process of industrialization. Yet just as that process 'and the social response to it varied from country to country, so the debate on women took on a distinctive character in each nation due to differences in political and economic development, societal and legal structure, and prevailing value system,