15 Facts About Hubertine Auclert

Hubertine Auclert left the convent for good in 1869 and moved to Paris in 1873.

In 1878, the "International Congress on Women's Rights" was held in Paris but to the chagrin of Hubertine Auclert, it did not support women's suffrage.

Resolute, in 1880, Hubertine Auclert began a tax revolt, arguing that without representation women should not be subjected to taxation.

At the Socialist Workers' Congress in Marseille in 1879, Hubertine Auclert made passionate pleas for women's rights, but argued that they needed economic independence due to their "natural" motherhood.

Hubertine Auclert was on a special committee to consider the equality of women and was given an hour to speak to the congress on the subject.

In 1884, the French government finally legalized divorce, but Hubertine Auclert denounced it because of the law's blatant bias against women that still did not allow a woman to keep her wages.

Hubertine Auclert proposed the radical idea that there should be a marriage contract between spouses with separation of property.

Hubertine Auclert acted out of a moral duty to elevate the status of Arab women to make it possible for them to obtain the same dignity of French women.

Hubertine Auclert claimed that the oppression from Islamic law was made worse by collusion between the French administrators and Arab men.

Hubertine Auclert claimed because of the patriarchy of both the Arabs and the French, the Algerian women were the least advanced socially, morally, and culturally.

Hubertine Auclert wrote about the consequences Arab women suffered because of Islam in the Algerian press: Le Radical Algerien, and in La Citoyenne.

Julia Clancy-Smith, author of Islam, Gender, and Identities in the Making of French Algeria, writes that, though Hubertine Auclert criticizes the negative influence of French colonialism, she is similar to contemporary British feminists in using a discourse of a "universal sisterhood" that was oxymoronically imperial and hierarchical to protect the colonized populations.

Clancy-Smith quotes that Hubertine Auclert claimed Arab men rendered the women "little victims of Muslim debauchery," and must be "freed from their cages, walled homes, and cloisters" to assimilate into Frenchwomen.

Clancy-Smith argues that Hubertine Auclert returned to Paris in 1892 without "any concrete results," other than ironically convincing many in France that the Algerians were too barbaric and unsuitable for political rights.

In November 1907, the General Council of the Seine yielded to pressure from Hubertine Auclert and gave its support to Paul Dussaussoy's 1906 bill proposing limited women's suffrage.