Femininity and the Right: From moral order to moral order

Abstract

This article highlights the complexities of conservative, anti-feminist discourses. It underscores the cross-cutting of religious, class and political cleavages and goes some way toward illustrating the resulting multivocality of anti-feminism. Three case studies of the Right in the 1870s, the 1930s and the 1980-1990s demonstrate both the resilience of the French Right's anti-feminism and its imperative of a moral order as well as its relative ineffectiveness in subordinating conservative women. The final picture is one in which conservative women have both accepted and rebelled against the Right's conventional idea of femininity.