Pauline Léon

Along with her friend Claire Lacombe, founded the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (Société des Républicaines-Révolutionnaires), and she also served as a prominent leader of the Femmes Sans-Culottes.

When her father died in 1784, Léon began helping her mother with the chocolate business in exchange for room and board.

It was through these affiliations that she met Théophile Leclerc, a leader of the Enragés, who fought violently for the creation of a French direct democracy.

In April of the next year, because of their radical revolutionary acts, the Committee of General Security issued a warrant for their arrest.

[4] After her release from prison, Léon began to pull herself out of the political scene, focusing her efforts on her household and her occupation as a schoolteacher.

[6] A couple years later, in 1791, she again joined a passionate political crowd and risked her life by signing the Cordeliers' republican petition at the Champ de Mars.

[13] While people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau worked to create a limited domestic image of womanhood,[14] others like Olympe de Gouges fought to pioneer women's rights.

[16] Léon, along with her friend Claire Lacombe, founded the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women (Société des Républicaines-Révolutionnaires) and became its president on 9 July 1793.

The following are a couple of exceptions: One of her surviving writings is her "Petition to the National Assembly on Women's Rights to Bear Arms," which she presented on 6 March 1791.

She promised that French women still held dear their roles as wives and mothers, and that their possession of the right to bear arms would not detract from this.