page_title: National Council of French Women
section_title: Inter-war years
hierarchical_section_title: National Council of French Women / History / Inter-war years
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Photographie des déléguées aux Etats généraux du féminisme organisé par le Conseil national des femmes françaises à Paris en 1929
context_page_description: The National Council of French Women is a society formed in 1901 to promote women's rights.
  The first members were mainly prosperous women who believed in using non-violent means to obtain rights by presenting the justice of the cause.
  Issues in the first half century included the right to vote, legal equality between husband and wife, paternal child support, social support for children, equal employment opportunity, equal pay for equal work and acquisition of citizenship on marriage. The National Council of French Women is affiliated with the International Council of Women. Now the oldest of French feminist organizations, it continues to work for causes related to the rights of women.
context_section_description: Unlike other European countries, women in France did not gain the right to vote after the war, but the CNFF gained influence and prestige.
  In 1919 Avril de Sainte-Croix and the CNFF engaged in a campaign to convince the Allied leaders at the Versailles Peace Conference to address women and their problems in the charter of the new League of Nations, with partial success. The CNFF also worked to convince the French senators to pass the bill for women's suffrage.
  Julie Siegfried's husband, Jules Siegfried, was a deputy and won passage of the right for women to vote in 1919, but the law was rejected by the Senate. 
  Julie Siegfried was decorated with the Knight's cross of the Legion of Honor by Alexandre Millerand.
  Avril de Sainte-Croix organized the CNFF congress in 1919.
  The congress was held in Strasbourg on 8-9 October 1919.
  At this meeting it called for a reform to the laws so that a French woman who married a foreigner could choose to retain her nationality. A draft change to the law was proposed under which a French woman would remain French unless she chose to take her husband's nationality. This was proclaimed as "a big step taken in just a few years" at the CNFF meeting in 1922, but the CNFF also asked for reciprocity, the right for a foreign woman who had married a French man to automatically have the right to French citizenship. 
  This eventually found its way into the law of 10 August 1927.
  In the postwar period the CNFF prepared arguments for reform of the laws to make it easier to submit paternity suits, while retaining the mother's right to custody of the child.
  In 1919 the CNFF felt women should contribute to the "struggle against depopulation", and demanded improvements in aid to large families and in child welfare services. They also demanded that women should have equal access to work and equal pay whether or not they were married or had children. Some feminists noted that schemes where the father received child support payments were unlikely to achieve the desired effect.
  The CNFF issued a position paper in 1919 that demanded an end to the legal disadvantages to which married women were subject, allowing them to make decisions without the approval of their husband, and demanded equal parental rights with any disagreement to be decided in court.
  In 1922 Avril de Sainte-Croix succeeded Julie Siegfried as president of the CNFF, holding this position until 1932 when she was replaced by Marguerite Pichon-Landry.
  In 1925 the CNFF had 125,000 members.
  Sainte-Croix campaigned in 1927 to have women admitted to the police force.
  She presided over the CNFF's États-Généraux du Féminisme congresses in 1929, 1930 and 1931. 
  These congresses focused in successive years on women's legal rights, economic standing and position in the colonies.
  In 1929 the Estates General of Feminism endorsed child allowances.Marguerite Pichon-Landry (1878–1972) chaired the Legislation section of the CNFF from 1914 to 1927, and was secretary-general from 1929 to 1932.
  She was president from 1932 to 1952. Pichon-Landry was awarded the medal of the resistance and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor.
caption: Etats généraux du féminisme, Paris, 1929
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