« 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

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.