At one of the conferences Maria Pognon, who would be one of the founders of the CNFF, argued against paternity suits and for a national maternity fund to support unwed mothers and their children.

[3] The 1900 meetings included the philanthropic and educational Congress of Women's Works and Institutions (Congrès des Œuvres et Institutions Féminines) and the Congress on the Status and Rights of Women (Congrès de la Condition et des Droits de la Femme) which called for full gender equality.

The two groups decided to combine to form the CNFF, defined as a federation of associations with the purpose of improving the condition of women in education, economics, society, philanthropy and politics.

[2] By this time Eliska Vincent had lost her enthusiasm for Equality, and resigned when it joined the National Council of French Women.

There was a tiny minority of socialists headed by Louise Saumoneau and Élisabeth Renaud, balanced by the Catholic Right led by Marie Maugeret.

These did not include Catholic women's groups, who were more likely to affiliate with the Patriotic League of Frenchwomen (Ligue Patriotique des Françaises).

In 1903 Sainte-Croix was secretary general of the CNFF and also of the French branch of the International Abolitionist Federation,[a] which she ran from her home at 1 Avenue Malakoff.

[12] The majority of feminists in France felt that delinquent fathers of illegitimate children should be forced to provide support, but did not deserve paternal rights.

[17] Gabrielle Duchêne, a wealthy philanthropist who helped organize seamstresses in Paris, was president of the labor section of the CNFF from 1913 to 1915.

The official line was that French women had always been sympathetic to pacifism and sought "peace and international understanding, if not in the entire world, at least in Europe."

However, "until the German women protested to their own government against its violations of international law and the crimes of its army against civilians, any cooperation with them would be a betrayal of the nation; the fact that they belong to the female sex was quite irrelevant.

[22] In 1919 Avril de Sainte-Croix and the CNFF engaged in a campaign to convince the Allied leaders at the Versailles Peace Conference to address women and their problems in the charter of the new League of Nations, with partial success.

[23] In the postwar period the CNFF prepared arguments for reform of the laws to make it easier to submit paternity suits, while retaining the mother's right to custody of the child.

[24] In 1919 the CNFF felt women should contribute to the "struggle against depopulation", and demanded improvements in aid to large families and in child welfare services.

Some feminists noted that schemes where the father received child support payments were unlikely to achieve the desired effect.

[26] In 1922 Avril de Sainte-Croix succeeded Julie Siegfried as president of the CNFF, holding this position until 1932 when she was replaced by Marguerite Pichon-Landry.

[32] The CNFF today has an Executive Committee of which one third is renewed every three years, elected by the General Assembly of the affiliated associations and individual members.