Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Follow this and additional works at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/histcw_cs IssuedA Civil Society:under a TheCC B PublicY-NC-ND Space 4.0 license:of Freemason https:/ /creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Women in France, 1744-1944 Creative Works A Civil Society explores the struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France’s civil society and its civic morality on behalf of 4-9-2021 women’s rights. As a vital component of the third sector during France’s modernization, Afreemasonr Civil Society:y empower Theed women Public in complex Space social of networks,Freemason contributing Women to a mor ine liberFrance,al republic, a more open society, and a more engaged public culture. The1744-1944 work shows that although women initially met with stiff resistance, their induction into the brotherhood was a significant step in the development of French civil society and its civic James Allen Southernmorality, Illinoisincluding Univ theersity pr omotionCarbondale of,
[email protected]’s rights in the late nineteenth century. Pulling together the many gendered facets of masonry, Allen draws from periodicals, memoirs, and copious archival material to account for the rise of women within the masonic brotherhood in the context of rapid historical change. Thanks to women’s social networks and their attendant social capital, masonry came to play a leading role in French civil society and the rethinking of gender relations in the public sphere. “James Smith Allen presents readers with an engaging, kaleidoscopic account of the uphill and contentious struggle to include select women as full participants in the arcane brotherhood of French freemasonry.”—Karen Offen, author of Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920 “A Civil Society is important because it connects the activism and writing of major figures in French women’s history with masonic networks and impulses.