Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part 1 Defining a feminine sphere of action, 1830-1914
- Part 2 Steps toward equality: women's administrative careers since the First World War
- Introduction: The First World War: a “1789” for women?
- 5 New opportunities for women in central government offices, 1919-1929
- 6 The challenges of the 1930s for women civil servants
- 7 Gendered assignments in the interwar Labor, Health, and Education ministries
- 8 Firings and hirings, collaboration and resistance: women civil servants and the Second World War
- 9 After the pioneers: women administrators since 1945
- Select bibliography
- Index
8 - Firings and hirings, collaboration and resistance: women civil servants and the Second World War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part 1 Defining a feminine sphere of action, 1830-1914
- Part 2 Steps toward equality: women's administrative careers since the First World War
- Introduction: The First World War: a “1789” for women?
- 5 New opportunities for women in central government offices, 1919-1929
- 6 The challenges of the 1930s for women civil servants
- 7 Gendered assignments in the interwar Labor, Health, and Education ministries
- 8 Firings and hirings, collaboration and resistance: women civil servants and the Second World War
- 9 After the pioneers: women administrators since 1945
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
As long as I believed in the double game of the Maréchal (that lasted about six months), I tried to make my father share my conviction. Veteran of Verdun that he was … he replied that I was a fool to believe in the pretenses of this old hypocrite.
Suzanne Borel Bidault (1973)The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 quickly dictated additional responsibilities for women civil servants but not changes in formal status. Premier Daladier immediately suspended the usual administrative recruiting, and temporary appointees filled vacancies created by the mobilization of manpower. By the time that concours for permanent positions were reauthorized in October 1940, Nazi Germany had defeated France, and the Vichy Regime, headed by Marshal Pétain and vice-premier Laval, had replaced the Third Republic. Discarding the Republic's watchwords of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” the authoritarian Vichy government offered the values of “Work, Family, Country” (Travail, Famille, Patrie).
The effects of the war, defeat, political change, and German occupation on women civil servants' professional lives are traced in this chapter. After a brief review of their roles before France's surrender to Germany in June 1940, there follows a more extensive survey of the impact of both Vichy ideology and wartime necessity on their employment. Both change and continuity marked women's administrative prospects from the late Third Republic to Vichy, for, depending upon individuals' circumstances, the wartime context could harm or help careers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rise of Professional Women in FranceGender and Public Administration since 1830, pp. 241 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000