Blame it on Napoleon

Dear Mr. Conroy,

The lack of a woman's suffrage movement in England actually goes all the way back to the Terror during the French Revolution. Although English development politically, socially, and economically has progressed at its own rate through much of history, the losses sustained in France at the time set back collective European feminism by about 20 years. First, the execution of the playwright-polemic Olympe de Gouges deprived women of an authoritative advocate of gender equality; Mary Wollstonecraft died in childbirth within two years, thus depriving the movement of a calculative supporter of equal education. Without the two strongest women of the era, no one advocated powerful representation of women as Napoleon drew up his Codes. In the Codes, women were expected by law to occupy a very specific role in the private sphere. Thus, the revolutionary spirit that allowed women to come into the public sphere was dissipated, the remaining women repressed. Had France taken a revolutionary stand and granted women (at least) some of the rights outlined in de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Citizen, then perhaps the rest of Europe could have followed suit. Unfortunately, nothing happened. Women were denied, and the movement would not start up again until the early 20th century. Who wants to give the vote to those people who are occupied with housework?

That is not to say that women had no advocates in post-Napoleonic Europe; in England, the utilitarian Mill was an uncommon male ally, publicizing his belief that the education of women would embody "the greatest good for the greatest number." However, Parliament was wary of working class men voting, let alone an entire "domestic" population. Why was this the case? Wasn't the prospect of wealthy women voting better than granting the vote to a poor, uneducated man? The 19th century answer would be that women are only suited for the private sphere and should have nothing to do with the public one their husbands occupied. In the 1970s, feminists would develop a theory that the so-called domestic/public spheres that were thought to separate men and women actually related to genital structure. In short, a claim was made that women were denied the vote based on "biological discrimination." A woman's reproductive system is internal, so she shouldn't be bothered with politics and the world and human rights. Naturally, it's all Napoleon's fault for throwing woman's rights out the window in 1800.

Let's just say that we're lucky to have moved on from all that.