Louise Saumoneau
| Louise Saumoneau | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Louise Aimée Saumoneau 17 December 1875 Poitiers, France |
| Died | 23 February 1950 (aged 74) |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Seamstress, Politician |
| Known for | Socialism, Pacifism |
Louise Saumoneau (17 December 1875 – 23 February 1950) was a French feminist who later renounced feminism as being irrelevant to the class struggle. She became a union leader and a prominent socialist. During World War I she was active in the internationalist pacifist movement. In a change of stance, after the war she remained with the right of the socialist party after the majority split off to form the French Communist Party.
Louise Aimée Saumoneau was born on 17 December 1875 near Poitiers. Her father was a cabinet maker who worked for a large workshop. Her elder sister married a cabinet maker and moved to Paris. In late 1896 Saumoneau, her younger sister and her parents joined her older sister in Paris. She worked as a seamstress doing piecework to help bring some income to the family, which now included her older sister's four children.
Around 1898 Saumoneau took a half day off work to attend a feminist meeting, and was annoyed when much time was spent discussing whether dowries were acceptable, an irrelevant topic to a working class woman. In 1899 Saumoneau and Elisabeth Renaud founded the first Feminist Socialist Group (Groupe Féministe Socialiste, GFS). The GFS manifesto protested the "double oppression of women, exploited on a large scale by capitalism, subject to men by laws and especially by prejudice."
At the feminist congress that began on 5 September 1900, chaired by Marguerite Durand, most of the delegates were from the elite rather than working women. Saumoneau and Renaud were admitted somewhat reluctantly. While the attendees had no difficulty supporting a resolution that called for an eight-hour day for industrial workers, with a full day off, they had considerable difficulty supporting a proposal that their own maids should get the same conditions. Saumoneau and Renaud pushed the point. They received a cold reception. Saumoneau and Renaud joined the Conseil National des Femmes Français when it was founded in 1901, headed by Sarah Monod. The majority of the members were moderate bourgeois republicans. The socialists were a tiny minority on the left of this movement, balanced by the Catholic Right led by Marie Maugeret. Saumoneau became hostile to feminism, seeing the class struggle as more important. She denounced "bourgeois" feminism and took little interest in problems unique to women.
In 1900 Saumoneau organized a union of seamstresses, which was associated with other groups in three working-class neighborhoods of Paris. Saumoneau was elected secretary, helped by her younger sister Berthe. A strike of tailors and seamstresses employed by workshops started in the middle of February 1901. The press gave it wide coverage, particularly the feminist La Fronde, and the strikers received significant financial support. The strike ended in what was essentially defeat a month later. Saumoneau became convinced that unions must represent both men and women. In September 1901 her union was dissolved and its members joined the men's union, now open to garment workers of both sexes. Saumoneau saw that the working women had more in common with working men than with women of the bourgeoisie. She could not find a way for a woman's group to be effective outside the male-dominated unions.
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