Women in the French Revolution

The French Revolution was a time of political unrest and uprising in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799. The French people were unhappy with how the French Monarchy was ruling the country. After economic downturn at the end of the 1780's, there was a break in the French government. The Storming of the Bastille followed this. The Revolution then continued in a series of political struggles, military battles, and different power grabs. The Revolution is seen as ending by the assumption of power by Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Women in the French Revolution played several key roles. One role that women played was in the political sphere. Women involved themselves in the uprisings against the national government on several occasions, one of them being the March on Versailles in 1789. Women also engaged in activism, demanding that in the new France that women and girls had equal inheritance rights as well as access to an equal education as men.