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The “Clerical Peril” and Radical Opposition to Female Voters in France

This chapter presents a case study of women's enfranchisement in France. It considers evidence for the role religious cleavage played in hampering French suffrage politics. It argues that Catholicism influenced both the incentives of leaders in the Radical Party and the motivations of women who were suffragists. The first section delves into the rules governing electoral politics and the groups that were empowered throughout the period. The second section gives a brief introduction to the campaign for women's suffrage in France after 1870. The third section analyzes the failure of suffrage reform in the French legislature. In 1919, when a bill for women's suffrage was debated in the Chamber of Deputies, an amalgamation of Socialists, conservative republicans, some Radicals, and parties of the right brought it to a majority vote. But many among the Radicals, and nearly every member of Georges Clemenceau's cabinet, voted against the measure.