Linda L. Clark – författare

In Third Republic France (1870-1940), the directrice of a normal school (école normale) for training women teachers was the most important woman representative of public primary education in each department. Her role was central to the republican educational project designed to bolster the establishment of a stable democracy after the Franco-Prussian War. The laicization of public education figured prominently in republican efforts to combat the old alliance of “throne and altar” favoring monarchy and religious instruction in public schools. Although laymen taught most boys in public schools by 1870, many nuns staffed separate girls' public schools. Thus an 1879 law mandated new departmental normal schools to train lay women teachers.This study of 313 normal school directrices between 1879 and 1940, an important group of professional women not previously studied, explores the challenges they encountered and their responses. Often the target of political hostility, they defended republican schooling as they interacted with local notables and authorities. In an educational system divided by social class as well as by gender, they trained teachers for “children of the people” attending free primary schools, separate from the elite and less numerous secondary schools. Directrices were expected to be role models for women teachers and to emphasize women's duties as wives and mothers, yet their careers exemplified an alternative to domesticity at a time of much debate about women's appropriate roles. Eventually some pushed against the boundaries of prevailing gender norms as they also joined professional, philanthropic, and feminist associations and sometimes publicly supported women's suffrage. Women and the Politics of Education in Third Republic France deftly examines the history of these women and the nature of their contributions to French society.

This history of professional women in positions of administrative responsibility illuminates women's changing relationship to the public sphere in France since the Revolution of 1789. Linda L. Clark traces several generations of French women in public administration, examining public policy and politics, attitudes towards gender, and women's work and education. Women's own perceptions and assessments of their positions illustrate changes in gender roles and women's relationship to the state. With seniority-based promotion, maternity leaves and the absence of the marriage bar, the situation of French women administrators invites comparison with their counterparts in other countries. Why has the profile of women's employment in France differed from that in the USA and the UK? This study gives unique insights into French social, political and cultural history, and the history of women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will interest scholars of European history and also specialists in women's studies.

This major new history of European women's professional activities and organizational roles during the 'long' nineteenth century examines what women could and could not do if they sought activity, purpose, or recognition beyond their own homes. Linda L. Clark surveys women's achievements in literature, art, music, theater, charity, education, medicine, law, and public administration, and examines the relationship between women's professional and philanthropic activity and the rise of feminist organizations. She shows that, despite continuing legal, cultural, and familial obstacles, thousands of ambitious women pursued professional activities for reasons that often combined economic need with aspirations to do meaningful work and gain public recognition. Detailing women's accomplishments from England to Russia, this unique survey enables readers to connect individual life stories with larger political, social, and economic contexts between 1789 and 1914 and is essential reading for students of modern European history, women's history, and gender studies.

This major new history of European women's professional activities and organizational roles during the 'long' nineteenth century examines what women could and could not do if they sought activity, purpose, or recognition beyond their own homes. Linda L. Clark surveys women's achievements in literature, art, music, theater, charity, education, medicine, law, and public administration, and examines the relationship between women's professional and philanthropic activity and the rise of feminist organizations. She shows that, despite continuing legal, cultural, and familial obstacles, thousands of ambitious women pursued professional activities for reasons that often combined economic need with aspirations to do meaningful work and gain public recognition. Detailing women's accomplishments from England to Russia, this unique survey enables readers to connect individual life stories with larger political, social, and economic contexts between 1789 and 1914 and is essential reading for students of modern European history, women's history, and gender studies.

This history of professional women in positions of administrative responsibility illuminates women's changing relationship to the public sphere in France since the Revolution of 1789. Linda L. Clark traces several generations of French women in public administration, examining public policy and politics, attitudes towards gender, and women's work and education. Women's own perceptions and assessments of their positions illustrate changes in gender roles and women's relationship to the state. With seniority-based promotion, maternity leaves and the absence of the marriage bar, the situation of French women administrators invites comparison with their counterparts in other countries. Why has the profile of women's employment in France differed from that in the USA and the UK? This study gives unique insights into French social, political and cultural history, and the history of women during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will interest scholars of European history and also specialists in women's studies.

This first book-length study of girls' primary education in France gives a concrete picture of how Frenchwomen were, and are, prepared for their roles in society.Until the 1960s, the primary school provided the only formal education for the majority of French children. Long recognized as a major inculcator of patriotic and moral values, the French primary school also played the vital role of preparing girls for their expected adult lives.Linda L. Clark describes in detail this socialization process. By analyzing a wide variety of documents from 1870 to the present-textbooks, curriculum materials, students' notebooks, examination questions, inspectors' reports, and teachers' memoirs-she has uncovered not only what was taught to girls, but the social and political assumptions that lay behind the primary school's messages about feminine personalities and activities.The book goes on to establish the relationship of feminine images to important aspects of French social, economic, and political life. A chapter on the preparation of girls for the world of work, for example, reveals the discrepancy between formal teaching about "femininity" and women's actual participation in society.