Actes

This report provides a detailed overview of the themes and discussions of the International Congress on Women's Rights, which was held in Paris in 1878 and included delegates from France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Russia, and the United States. After the opening session, the second session inquired into the history of feminist demands made in France and elsewhere and places women's rights in the context of humankind's march toward progress. The third session looks at education, particularly women's eligibility to receive general and work-related training as a means of improving their social and political situations. Related, the fourth and fifth sessions discuss women's labor, including women's domestic labor and strategies to overcome prejudice and discrimination in the workplace. The sixth and seventh sessions looked at the uneven concept of morality, which is understood as a series of guiding social "laws" influencing how men and women are expected to behave separately. The final sessions of the conference investigated women's position in relation to laws and legislation, including regulations on prostitution, from a largely French perspective.