The French Communist Party and Feminism

Abstract

In France, as in the rest of the advanced capitalist world, the women's movement has come to stay. The movement's demands for changes in the status of women and the new content which it has brought to politics can not be ignored. The political context which the French women's movement faced in the past decade was a Left revitalised around an alliance of parties, Union de la Gauche. This has meant, in contrast to Britain or North America, that a lively and socialist Left already existed with which the movement had to deal. And the parties of the Left, with their own analyses of advanced, monopoly capitalism could not ignore the women. A confrontation was inevitable; a resolution of benefit to both was more problematic.