to work in farms and 73% live today in large cities. By far the largest of these is Paris, at 2.1 million inhabitants (11 million in the Parisian region), followed by Lille, Lyon, Marseille (upwards of 1.2 million inhabitants each). Much of this urbanization takes place not in the traditional center of the cities, but in the suburbs (or "banlieues") that surround them (the cement and steel housing projects in these areas are called "cités"). With immigration from poorer countries, these "cités" have been the center of racial and class tensions since the 1960s. French identity The loss of regional and traditional culture (language and accent, local customs in dress and food), the poverty of many rural regions and the rise of modern urban structures (housing projects, supermarkets) have created tensions in modern France between traditionalists and progressives. Compounding the loss of regionalism is the role of the French capital and the centralized French State. Independence movements sprang up in Brittany, Corsica and the Basque regions, while the Vichy Regime (echoing Nazi racial propaganda) actively encouraged Catholicism and local "folk" traditions, which they saw as truer foundations for the French nation. The post-war years saw the state take control of a number of French industries. The modern political climate has however been for increasing regional power ("decentralization") and for reduced state control in private enterprise ("privatization"). It can be assumed that “The First World War initiated a period of sudden, often traumatic transformation. It accelerated changes that had slowly begun to alter French cultural, social, and economic life in the first decades of the twentieth century.” French identity and culture had been completely disheveled after World War I, and that destruction is in part caused by gender-ambiguity. French culture and identity were heavily based on societal gender roles that seemed to have been blurred after the war. Perhaps the “most famous expression of this postwar sense of cultural mortality” came from a 1919 letter by Paul Valery, which discussed that “We modern civilizations, we too now know that we are mortal like the others." Feminism and the French Feminist Movement After World War I, when it had lost 1.4 million of its citizens to World War I, France was facing a serious issue. With a casualty rate higher than any other country in Europe at 16.5 percent, along with 3 million wounded and 1.1 million suffering from permanent disability, France