In addition the article covers scholarly work on topics in history, education, reproductive rights, families, feminism, domestic violence, religion and art.

Upon the onset of the Industrial Revolution in France, women's roles changed with them becoming domestic helpers, factory workers, and washerwomen.

[citation needed] The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille (1939), which increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants, during the Great Depression.

However, French women who have attained a "suitable level of education" and training are now gaining prominent positions in the fields of business and the engineering industry, particularly in Paris,[6] the capital city of France.

Educational aspirations were rising and becoming increasingly institutionalised to supply the church and the state with the civil servants to serve as their future administrators.

France had many small local schools in which working-class children, both boys and girls, learned to read, the better "to know, love, and serve God."

The sons and daughters of the noble and bourgeois elites were given gender-specific educations: boys were sent to upper school, perhaps a university, and their sisters, if they were lucky enough to leave the house, would be sent to board at a convent with a vague curriculum.

[11] France has been one of the first countries to take legal action against female genital mutilation (which occurs in its immigrant communities) and to prosecute those who perform the practice.

In 1992, the Court of Cassation convicted a man of the rape of his wife and stated that the presumption that spouses have consented to sexual acts that occur within marriage is valid only if the contrary is not proven.

[19] Until 1994, France kept in the French Penal Code the article from 1810 that exonerated rapists if they later married their victim, and in 1994, Law 94-89 criminalized all marital rape.

[22] In the past decades, social views on the traditional family have changed markedly, which is reflected in the high proportion of cohabitation and births outside of marriage and in a questioning of traditional expectations regarding the family; in the European Values Study (EVS) of 2008, 35.4% of respondents in France agreed with the assertion "Marriage is an outdated institution".

[24] In France, legal reforms regarding the "illegitimacy" of children (born outside of marriage) began in the 1970s, but it was only in the 21st century that the principle of equality was fully upheld (through Act no.

Some famous figures were notable in the 19th century, including Louise Michel, Russian-born Elisabeth Dmitrieff and Nathalie Lemel.

This French feminist theory, compared to Anglophone feminism, is distinguished by an approach which is more philosophical and literary, rather than focused on practical issues.

[28] Simone de Beauvoir, a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist and social theorist, is a prominent feminist figure.

In 2010, France enacted a ban on face covering, prohibiting the wearing of niqab, burqa and similar outfits in public places.

[34][35] Particularly noteworthy French women painters during the late 18th century include Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Anne Vallayer-Coster, and Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

Marie Antoinette and the Mesdames de France, also helped Labille-Guiard and Vigée Le Brun obtain admission to the Académie which caused a huge stir among the press, who decided to pit them as rivals against each other.

After the Revolution, lesser known women artists were able to use the now wide-open biennial Salon (France) to display their art to a more receptive audience.

[42] Due to concerns like this, women were more likely to embrace movements like the Impressionism that put artistic emphasis on everyday subjects, and not historical themes, that could be painted at home.