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Olympe de Gouges

Original nameOlympe de Gouges

Author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, guillotined for women's rights

Those Who Gave Power Back to the People · Revolution & Rights
French RevolutionWomen’s RightsAbolitionMartyrdom

Who they are

A playwright and pioneer of women's rights during the French Revolution. When the revolutionaries issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and said not a word of women's rights, she indignantly wrote, in 1791, the pointed Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, proclaiming point by point that women should enjoy the same rights as men, and leaving the line: 'Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.' She also opposed slavery and criticized the Jacobin Terror. In the end this brave voice for women was herself sent to the guillotine — her prophetic line borne out in the cruelest way.

Primary sourcesde Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791)

Key stories

"The Right to the Scaffold, and to the Rostrum"

In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman, de Gouges wrote the ringing line: 'Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.' Meaning: since women bleed and die for the revolution, they deserve an equal political voice. Two years later she was indeed sent to the guillotine for her views — proving the cruel first half of her line with her life, and making its second half an undying cry of the women's movement.

Relationships

Ally
♀️Mary Wollstonecraft　contemporary pioneers of women’s rights across the sea from each other
Nemesis
⚔️Robespierre　sent to the guillotine for opposing the Jacobin Terror

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and martyrdomThe Declaration of the Rights of Woman is one of the earliest documents to argue systematically for women’s political rights, and "woman has the right to the scaffold, so she must have the right to the rostrum" became a classic line of the women’s movement; she herself was guillotined, a symbol of martyrdom for women’s rights.
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