France granted women the right to vote in April 1944 — notoriously late among Western democracies, and only after the provisional government of de Gaulle acted by ordinance rather than through any legislative process. The delay had less to do with popular opposition than with the Senate's repeated blocking of suffrage bills passed by the Chamber of Deputies, the most significant rejection occurring in 1922.
The 80th anniversary of that 1944 ordinance is the occasion this coin marks.
France granted women the right to vote in April 1944 — notoriously late among Western democracies, and only after the provisional government of de Gaulle acted by ordinance rather than through any legislative process. The delay had less to do with popular opposition than with the Senate's repeated blocking of suffrage bills passed by the Chamber of Deputies, the most significant rejection occurring in 1922.
The 80th anniversary of that 1944 ordinance is the occasion this coin marks.