Since its origins, the women’s movement has expended phenomenal energy to defend women’s rights. Activists have had to demonstrate courage, tenacity and creativity. The recipe for their success is largely due to the diversity of rhetoric and the original mobilisations they have deployed.

Feminism has been plural from the start. It is part of the currents of thought of its time: liberal, socialist and revolutionary; differentialist, Marxist or materialist at the time of theories of social domination; lesbian, egalitarian, care, ecological, transhumanist, queer nowadays, with the triumph of identity quests. Of course, certain currents have tried to gain the upper hand. The battles were sometimes heated and even violent, but the union prevailed in defence of women’s rights.

As an open door to other ways of perceiving collective life and the place of each individual, feminism has not finished writing its history and, in so doing, providing another view of our common humanity.

It is this great history, alive and exciting, that we tell you in this book.

Contributors: Fabienne Brugère, Justine Canonne, Anne Cova, Pauline Delage, Sophie Delvallez, Martine Fournier, Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, Hélène Frouard, Isabelle Matamaros, Bibia Pavard, Michelle Perrot, Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Florence Rochefort, Marion Rousset, Joan Scott, Françoise Thébaud, Justine Zeller.