« De l'angélus de l'aube à l'angélus du soir » : être militante à temps plein dans les syndicats féminins chrétiens en France durant l'entre-deux-guerres
Authors
Joceline Chabot
Abstract
In France, female Christian unions were established through the will manifested by
women of Catholic social background to provide female workers and employees
with an autonomous, unmixed union organization, that is, an organization exclusively
for women and solidly Christian. From these female organizations emerged
some strong personalities, revealed to us through an analysis of their militant
careers. Following a biographical method, the author first provides a sociological
portrait of women’s militantism and secondly chronicles the interwar careers of the
principal leaders of the female Christian unions. These careers are both exceptional,
yet typical of those of many female Christian unionists. In a society based on
unequal gender relations, female unions, as autonomous organizations, offered
women a forum that allowed them to escape the restrictions imposed on them while
encouraging the acquisition of skills that they used to good effect in the wider union
movement.