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
5 - New opportunities for women in central government offices, 1919-1929
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
The period between 1918-1919 and 1928-1929 might be called the golden age for women in the domain of work.
Suzanne Grinberg (1932)On 20 May 1919, the Chamber of Deputies concluded a debate on women's suffrage and, by a vote of 329 to 95, passed a bill to enfranchise women. Two days later, premier Clemenceau issued a decree that made the Ministry of War, which he also headed, the fist ministry to give women access to the position of rédacteur (chief editorial clerk), the entry-level rank in the hierarchy of the more prestigious civil service posts in central government offices. With each action French politicians recognized that during the First World War women had assumed new roles beyond as well as within the household and that their efforts merited a grateful nation's reward. Indeed, Clemenceau, “the Tiger,” had long opposed women's suffrage and did not publicly support it until early 1919. These French decisions were also part of an international success story for many lengthy women's suffrage campaigns: the British Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act in February 1918; and in June 1919 the United States Senate, following the lead of the House of Representatives, approved a suffrage amendment to the constitution, subsequently ratified by thirty-six states. In Germany after the Kaiser's downfall, the Socialist-led provisional government supported inclusion of women's suffrage in the new Republic's constitution, drafted by an elected assembly in Weimar in 1919.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rise of Professional Women in FranceGender and Public Administration since 1830, pp. 141 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000