The Rise of Professional Women in France: Gender and Public Administration since 1830 (review)

Using personnel files, published accounts, and interviews with retirees, Clark explores women's slow entrée into the upper ranks of the French civil service. She emphasizes the paradox that women initially gained access to this public sphere through arguments of gender specificity. In 1837, when the first "inspectrice" of nursery schools was appointed, most women and men agreed that the position demanded women's "essential maternal qualities." The same claim was made for those inspecting women's prisons, the care of abandoned children, and the implementation of gender-specific, protective-labor legislation.

With the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870, the openings available to women in the higher civil service increased, but the rationale for their appointments remained maternalist. Each ministry set its own hiring standards; the most prestigious—Justice and Finance—excluded women. Even in those apparently open to women, such as Education, certain positions were restricted. This comprehensive study rests on a series of fascinating group and individual biographies of these pioneering civil servants. They were middle-class, but experiencing downward social mobility. Often the death of a husband or father, or economic calamity in the family, made the search for respectable employment an urgent necessity. Almost all continued their career until retirement, suggesting that they had little option but to earn their own living. They were educated, but few had a baccalauréat. About half were married with families. Clark claims that maternity leaves, the absence of a marriage bar, and promotion by seniority enabled these nineteenth-century women to fulfill family and work responsibilities.

In Clark's view, World War I and its aftermath decisively changed French society, gender relations, and government institutions. In 1919, Premier Georges Clemenceau permitted women to apply for the position of "rédacteur" in the Ministry of War, the entry-level rank in the central administration (chief editorial clerk). Women then had some access to the same jobs with the same security, benefits, and pay as men. In the 1920s, the dearth of men on the labor market and the expansion of government opened an entirely new level of government employment to women. They found work in the Ministries of Education, Health, Labor, and Public Works. The gender-defined positions of inspectrice also continued to expand. However, nine ministries still excluded them, and some that had accepted women in the 1920s excluded or restricted them in the difficult 1930s. The profile of women civil servants during this era was similar to that of the previous century, but with important distinctions. Most possessed the baccalauréat; many had a university degree; and the cohort of younger women was larger.

Clark concludes that professional women's situation in the interwar period had advanced, though precariously. The new reality and new image of the "working girl" was bitterly contested by a growing backlash against women's new (or perceived) independence. This backlash intensified in the 1930s and became an intrinsic part of Vichy ideology. Natalism and domesticity were the basis of Vichy's law of October 1940, which aimed to force older and married women out of the civil service. Women, like those labeled "undesirable, un-French, Freemasons, and Jewish," were to be purged from the civil service. Thousands lost their positions and civil-service job security was violated, but most women in the civil service continued to work. Given wartime realities, the Vichy regime had to abandon its ideological stance and accept the necessity of hiring and retaining women. By 1945 the number of women in the French labor force had increased, and public employment had expanded.

The new postwar governments pledged to reform the civil service. Women's suffrage, a civil-service statute guaranteeing full equality to men and women, and the creation of a new degree permitting entry to all ministries, seemed to...