Louise Saumoneau (17 December 1875 – 23 February 1950) was a French feminist who later renounced feminism as being irrelevant to the class struggle.
She worked as a seamstress doing piecework to help bring some income to the family, which now included her older sister's four children.
[1] Around 1898 Saumoneau took a half day off work to attend a feminist meeting, and was annoyed when much time was spent discussing whether dowries were acceptable, an irrelevant topic to a working-class woman.
[3] The GFS manifesto protested the "double oppression of women, exploited on a large scale by capitalism, subject to men by laws and especially by prejudice.
[2] Saumoneau and Renaud joined the Conseil National des Femmes Français when it was founded in 1901, headed by Sarah Monod.
The press gave it wide coverage, particularly the feminist La Fronde, and the strikers received significant financial support.
In 1905 the Socialist Party (Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO) would not accept the GFS as a constituent organization, and it disappeared.
[3] Louise Saumoneau revived La Femme socialiste as an educational and propaganda organ in 1912, and continued to publish it until 1940.
[3] Saumoneau threw out all feminists from the GDFS and started a vigorous program to recruit socialist women, which was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.
[12] On 5 July 1914 Saumoneau led the first event of the International Working Women's Day, held just before the outbreak of war.
"[14] Zetkin organized an international conference of socialist women in Bern, Switzerland late in March 1915 as a protest against the war.
[18] When Aletta Jacobs organized a feminist and pacifist congress at The Hague in 1915 she wanted French participation but would not invite Saumoneau.
[16] The International Action Committee (Comité d'action internationale) was founded in December 1915 by French syndicalists who supported the pacifist declarations of the Zimmerwald Conference.
[3] Saumoneau continued to publish Le Femme socialiste until 1940, when it closed down for the rest of World War II (1939–1945).