La Voix des Femmes (France, 1848)
It was the first female-led paper to be published daily in France, and grew to encompass an entire organization known as the Société de la Voix des Femmes.
[4] La Voix des Femmes ultimately ended in June 1848 due to disappointments with the government, as French workers and women suffered under its new repressive measures.
Writers and members of La Voix des Femmes increasingly faced political persecution, and ultimately the publication was unable to endure past the June Days uprising.
[2] La Voix des Femmes was published three weeks after the February Revolution of 1848 as a response to the Provisional Government’s failure in upholding social promises and rights for women.
[5] During the February Revolution, women of different ages and social backgrounds played a principal role; they were involved in the barricades and supported the Provisional Government.
[2] Significant social transformation took place during the year 1848, and in this context, La Voix des Femmes emerged as a beacon for women’s rights.
[7] Eugénie Niboyet, who presided over La Voix des Femmes in its beginning stages, argued that people could no longer sideline women’s calls for suffrage and education in the midst of creating the Second Republic.
La Voix des Femmes, however, obtained high rates of readership and significant praises as readers called for its publication daily.
They also continued publishing in order to counteract omnipresent male influence by providing women’s voices in the public sphere, and further, to advance female power.
[5] In founding La Voix des Femmes, the three main editors tried to uplift the voices and other disadvantaged groups in French society through the paper and the organization, which went by the same name.
Society membership cost up to three francs, with the lowest as fifty centimes, which brought additional income to help provide for printing and financing the workshops.
They utilized meetings as a place to raise funds for their “sisters,” and subsequently gave the collected money to working class women for food and other necessities.
[9] The last issue of La Voix des Femmes continued to discuss matters of divorce and disproved the Republic of 1848, declaring it to be archaic and mistreating of working people.
As La Voix des Femmes was established in the wake of the February Revolution and universal male suffrage, much of their coverage advocated for granting women the same rights.
[10] Despite the fact that this concession was meant to soothe conservative sensibilities, La Voix des Femmes continued to receive resistance from the general public, ultimately resulting in the shuttering of their workshops and in-person meetings.
For instance, La Voix des Femmes supported Eugénie Foa's efforts to organize a national workshop that provided work for these women.
[1][4] Some notable and named contributors include Louise Crouzat, Hortense Wild, Anne Knight, Bettina von Arnim, Marie-Noémi Constant, Adèle Esquiros, Widow Mourey, Eugénie Foa, P.G.
This journal, which ended in August 1848 due to censorship, emulated La Voix des Femmes' techniques to call for the enfranchisement of women.
[10] The socialist nature of this newspaper, along with being revolutionary, proved to be influential on feminists of the latter part of the 19th century, including Charlotte Gilman, Frances Willard, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
