Marie Popelin
| Marie Popelin | |
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Photograph portrait of Marie Popelin
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| Born |
17 September 1846 Schaerbeek, Belgium |
| Died | 5 June 1913 (aged 66) Ixelles, Belgium |
| Occupation | lawyer, educationalist |
| Known for | First woman to receive a law doctorate in Belgium |
Marie Popelin (17 September 1846 – 5 June 1913) was a Belgian feminist, lawyer and political campaigner. Popelin worked with Isabelle Gatti de Gamond in the development of women's education and, in 1888, became the first Belgian woman to receive a doctorate in law.
Marie Popelin was born in Schaerbeek near Brussels into a middle-class family. One of her brothers was a doctor, another an army officer—Marie Popelin was well educated by the standards of the time and place. Along with her sister Louise, she worked with feminist educator Isabelle Gatti de Gamond, teaching in Brussels from 1870 to 1875. Disagreements with Gatti led to the sisters moving to Mons to run a new school for girls there, established with Masonic assistance. In 1882, Marie Popelin returned to Brussels to head the middle school in nearby Laeken, but was removed from her post the following year.
At the age of 37, Popelin enrolled at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, studying law. Completing her studies as a Doctor of Laws in 1888, Popelin was the first woman to do so in Belgium. She applied for admission to the bar association which would allow her to plead cases in the Brussels courts. This was refused, although no law or regulation explicitly prevented the admission of women to the bar. Her appeals to the Court of Appeal and the Court of Cassation were unsuccessful, but widely reported in the Belgian and foreign press. The "Popelin affair" (French: L'Affaire Popelin) demonstrated to the supporters of female education that simply providing young women with access to higher education was insufficient unless further, legal, changes were also made.Jeanne Chauvin, who obtained a law degree in Paris in 1890, was at first discouraged by the case, but was persuaded by the Belgian Louis Frank to apply for admission to the bar, and was sworn in after the French law was changed in 1900.
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