Reign of virtue: mobilizing gender in Vichy France

Abstract

Exploring the effects of military defeat and Nazi occupation on French articulations of gender in wartime France, this text uses such sources as governmental archives, historical texts, and propaganda. Miranda Pollard explores the ways in which Vichy politicians used gendered images of work, family, and sexuality to restore and maintain political and social order. She argues that Vichy wanted to return France to an illustrious and largely mythical past of harmony, where citizens all knew their places and fulfilled their responsibilities, where order prevailed. The National Revolution, according to Pollard, replaced the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity with work, family and fatherland, making the acceptance of traditional masculine and feminine roles a key priority. The author shows how Vichy's policies promoted the family as the most important social unit of a new France and elevated married mothers to a new social status - even as their educational, employment, and reproductive rights were strictly curtailed.

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