École normale supérieure de Sèvres, woman professor, Third Republic, 19th century, secondary female education, female professional identity, celibacy, female secondary teaching profession, social acceptability, learned woman, feminism, education history, cultural history
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Abstract
This article examines the status of women professors in France during the Third Republic, focusing on the École normale supérieure de Sèvres and the societal constraints they faced.
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[...] permanent surveillance, tight supervision ? infantilization by their hierarchy, hindrance to their individual freedoms due to concern for 'what will be said', difficulties in finding an independent accommodation (§20 p.408) without parental tutelage, difficulty in developing a social life outside the institution. (§19 p.407-408 & Note de fin n°13) This daily presence of external control from the institution or social environment on the behavior of the professors also hinders their initiatives to try to create structured networks of solidarity or sorority that fail ? [...]
[...] except for 'colocations' between professors named in the same establishment ? solution 'subie' facing the difficulty of finding an independent accommodation. (§23 p.408) Independence or Misfortune? : "Prepared from a very early age 'for apostolate and martyrdom', they had internalized as natural the link between female professorship and celibacy ? renunciation 'voluntary' to a flourishing private life and to a real emancipation promoted by the feminist movements of the time ? more than a voluntary choice, the author describes here an internalization by these teachers of the stereotypes linked to single women and/or learned, independent women (§25 to 39 p.408-412) For those among these teachers who did not conform to these gender prejudices, to the essentialist principles of feminine existence ? [...]
[...] Available online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09571558211022008 (last accessed on XX/XX/202X) Author's Presentation - Context of publication Loukia Efthymiou is a Ph.D. in History (University Paris VII - Denis Diderot), Professor of French Civilization History (specialization in Women's and Gender History) at the Department of French Language and Literature of the Faculty of Letters of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She dedicates her research to Women's and Gender History, Education History, and Cultural History. She is the author of numerous monographs and articles. [...]
[...] appearance of the image of the 'modern female teacher' ? the cause seems won after many sacrifices. (§44 p.413) After the 60s: double inversion ? the teaching profession feminizes in significant proportions and the image of the female teacher is socially valued. [...]
[...] Question: How was the image of the "female teachers" invented in 1881, a hybrid of the "lay nun" entirely devoted to her cause and the scholar who paradoxically had few degrees of freedom?" - Approaches and corresponding sources This study is based, to a significant extent, on the work carried out by the author within the framework of her thesis entitled 'Identities of teachers, identities of women. Women professors in public secondary education in France, 1914-1939' (unpublished, 2002) which was written under the direction of the historian Michelle Perrot. [...]
