Eliane Viennot's Conference "France, Women, and Power: A Besieged Fortress?"

As part of the first cycle of conferences Agora des Savoirs 2026-2027.

Celebrated as the temple of knowledge, the University was initially, for men, a formidable tool for reinforcing male dominance, allowing them for seven centuries to access lucrative professions, positions of power, honors, and prestige exclusively. It is within this fortress that Julie-Victoire Daubié opens the first breach in 1861, when she manages to pass the baccalauréat. From then on, as a disgruntled contemporary puts it, "it’s the gears turning": driven by feminist struggles, monopolies fall one by one.

By the end of the 20th century, another decisive step is taken. The constitutional revision favoring "equal access for women and men to electoral mandates and elective functions" opens a new horizon for women: the conquest of 50% of all goods and powers.

Tracing the inexorable progression of gender equality in our country, Éliane Viennot also documents the energy, inventiveness, cunning, bad faith, and violence of those who opposed it. They did everything in their power to block it, from the passage of "scélérate laws" to the writing of History, including the maneuvers of boys' clubs and the promotion of what is now called the culture of rape.

Free entry subject to availability.

Author Biography

Éliane Viennot is an agrégée of letters and a historian of power relations between the sexes. She is a professor of French literature and a historian of the Renaissance at the University of Saint-Étienne, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France.

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