Women in the French Resistance Women in the French Resistance played an important role in the context of French resistance to the occupying German forces during World War II . Women represented 15 to 20 % of the total number of French Resistance fighters within the country . Women also represented 15 % of political deportations to Nazi - run concentration camps . Actions in the French Resistance . Women were generally confined to underground roles in the French Resistance network . Lucie Aubrac , who has become a symbol of the French Resistance within France , never had a clearly defined role in the hierarchy of the movement , which in her case involved the regional Southern Liberation . Hélène Viannay , more highly educated than her husband Philippe Viannay , the founder of the Défense de la France , did not write one single article for the clandestine newspaper of the same name , nor did the other companions of the chiefs of the Défense de la France , although they did take part in meetings to edit the newspaper . On the other hand , Suzanne Buisson , cofounder of the Comité d ' action socialiste ( CAS ) was the treasurer until her arrest . Only one woman , Marie - Madeleine Fourcade , was a head of a network ( by leading the British to believe that the true head of the Alliance network was actually a man ) . No woman ever led a movement , or a maquis ( guerilla group ) or a Liberation Committee , none was installed as a Commissioner within the Provisional Government of the Republic of France or a Minister of the Liberation . Only a limited minority took part in the armed battles . Although women were typical partisan resistance fighters in Italy , Greece , Yugoslavia and the occupied USSR , feared and as numerous as men , they were a small minority in the maquis in France . It has been speculated that this may have been influenced by the fact that French women were not subject to the " Service du travail obligatoire " ( English : Compulsory Work Service ; STO ) , as were women in other occupied territories . Women organized demonstrations of housewives in 1940 , were active in the " comités populaires " of the clandestine PCF , and ever present with encouragement and material aid for strikers , as in the Nord - Pas - de - Calais in May 1941 , as well as supporting the maquis They were indispensable as typists , and above all as liaison agents — in part because the Germans distrusted women less , and also because the numerous identification controls against resistors of the " Service du travail obligatoire " ( STO ) did not apply to them . Historian Olivier Wieviorka emphasizes that the strategy of these movements was often , in fact to put women into missions that required visibility , since they were less exposed to repression : the Vichy government of occupied France and the German military were not able to fire on French women demanding food for their children . Individual sacrifices . Some of the most prominent women in the French Resistance were Marie - Hélène Lefaucheux who was chief of the women ' s section of the " Organisation civile et militaire " . She was also a member of the Paris Liberation Committee . Following the French Liberation , she was a Deputy and then Senator of the French government . Touty Hiltermann played a decisive role in the establishment and functioning of the Dutch - Paris movement . Germaine Tillion became head of the Hauet - Vildé Resistance network from 1941 to 1942 , later approved by the larger Resistance network Groupe du musée de l ' Homme . Hélène Studler organized " réseau d ' évasions " , networks for smuggling dissidents out of France . Thousands of prisoners and Resistance members escaped to freedom through her work . She organized the escape of François Mitterrand , the future President of France ; Boris Holban , founder of the network FTP - MOI in March 1942 ; and General Henri Giraud on April 17 , 1942 . It is also worth noting that innumerable clandestine combatants survived the war as part of a couple , and that their Resistance participation would have been impossible or insurvivable without the support of their companion at their side : Cécile and Henri Rol - Tanguy , Raymond and Lucie Aubrac , Paulette and Maurice Kriegel - Valrimont , Hélène and Philippe Viannay , Marie - Hélène and Pierre Lefaucheux , Cletta and Daniel Mayer , and many others were inseparable . There were numerous women in the Resistance who married and had children entirely clandestinely , without interrupting their Resistance struggle . Some saved the lives of their husbands , such as Lucie Aubrac or Marie - Hélène Lefaucheux . Others shared their struggle up to torture , deportation and death , such as Madeleine Truel . A famous deportation convoy , on January 24 , 1943 , included many communists and widows of men shot by the occupation regime , including Maï Politzer , wife of Georges Politzer , or Hélène Solomon , daughter of the great scholar Paul Langevin and wife of writer Jacques Solomon . Legacy . While the CNR neglected to mention giving the vote to women in its programme of renewal in March 1944 , général de Gaulle signed the order declaring women ' s suffrage for French citizens in Algiers , on April 2 , 1944 . The emancipating role of the women in the French Resistance was thus recognized . There are few monuments honouring the actions of these women . One of the exceptions is the city of Riom , which has honoured two of its citizens with a specific monument : Marinette Menut , Lieutenant - Pharmacist of the MURs d ' Auverne and Claude Rodier - Virlogeux , Master Sergeant of the MURs d ' Auvergne .