1972. Exactly 50 years ago, the law enshrined the principle of “equal work, equal pay” (which has yet to be applied in practice since a difference of 9% remains today).
At the time, the cause of women was progressing: it had only been seven years since a woman could open a bank account on her own.
Seven years also that she has a full legal personality, and is therefore no longer considered a child in the eyes of the law.
In 1972, finally, it had only been two years since men no longer had the title of “head of the family”, and the marital and paternal omnipotence that went with it.
But there is still so much to do...
♦ 50 years ago, the husband could open his wife's mail
Everything that is not prohibited is in fact authorized.
Thus, going beyond the absence of a formal text authorizing the husband to open his wife's mail, “this remained a very common practice” reports Lucette Parisot, 29 years old at the time and married since she was 19.
My husband wouldn't open mine because he didn't feel the need to, but a lot of my friends' mail was sifted through.”
It was only in 1994 that an article 226-15 of the Criminal Code appeared, condemning to one year in prison and a fine of 300,000 francs anyone who opened the mail (paper or electronic) of others in bad faith. .
Regarding your emails, the small subtlety of today's Penal Code is that there can be no search unless there is a password.
A priori,
so today nothing prevents your husband from looking at your emails if your computer is not protected by a secret code.
But the big difference is that it works both ways…
♦
The woman was officially not allowed to wear pants yet
“In 1970, I wore trousers only in my private life and because my husband agreed.
I never put it on at work, it was forbidden in the public service, ”explains Lucette.
Even if many of them exceeded it, women have only officially had the right to wear pants since... 2013. The law prohibiting "the cross-dressing of women", dating from November 17, 1800, stipulated that "any woman wishing to dress as a man must go to the Prefecture of Police to obtain authorization”.
However, this prohibition had been softened by two circulars of 1892 and 1909 authorizing women to wear trousers “if the woman holds a bicycle handlebar or the reins of a horse by the hand”.
Obviously incompatible with our modern society,
♦
The wife could divorce only in case of fault
Since 1975, the law allows spouses to divorce by mutual consent, but before that, divorce was governed by a law of 1884, authorizing it only for fault reported by the evidence.
The faults were then exhaustively enumerated: adultery, condemnation to afflictive and infamous punishment, excess, abuse and serious insults.
In the event of marital disagreement, the two spouses redoubled their inventiveness by writing numerous insulting letters to each other (most often under the dictation of their lawyers) in order to convince the courts... For Lucette, divorced in 1979, even with a legal reason, women divorced anyway very rarely: “Women had learned from an early age to adapt, to endure.
They closed their eyes to that and many other things.
♦
The adultery of the wife was more serious than that of the husband
Before the law of 1975, the woman guilty of the "crime" of adultery was punished by a prison sentence of 3 months to 2 years, while her husband only incurred for this fault a sentence of fine of 360 to 7,200 francs - and, be careful, only if his adultery had been committed in the marital home.
The penalty was all the more severe as the courts of the time tended towards a very broad case law: "Two beings, of different sexes, locked up in a room with a single bed was enough to constitute the offense of adultery", recalls the newspaper
The Courts Gazette
, September 3, 1890. There was also the other sentence, the unofficial one, Lucette whispers: The famous “what will we say about it”.
If fickle men were said to be "interested", women were "sluts".
“When the superintendent was informed by the husband of an adultery in progress, he went to look for the woman who had just got dressed in the bed of the lovers and took her to the police station”.
It was not until 1975 that adultery was therefore decriminalized and slipped into the civil code, thus preventing the woman from being imprisoned for the misdeed.
♦
The husband could veto the care of his wife
Lucette laughs yellow when the subject is broached.
Following tumors, she had to undergo a hysterectomy, removal of the ovaries and uterus.
Before the operation, the surgeon, at the time, asked her to provide him with the marital authorization proving the husband's consent.
“There you go, I removed the nursery but I left the playroom!
exclaimed the doctor to the husband after the operation.
"It was the joke of the surgeons," says Lucette.
If the latter was "lucky" to have the approval of her husband, she knows many women for whom this was not the case.
For these unfortunates, only one solution was possible: to have surgery in secret.
“I know a woman who waited for her husband to go on a trip to have her tubes tied for fear of getting pregnant again,” she says.
There was really only one situation in which the surgeon could operate without the approval of the husband: if yet another pregnancy could put the woman's life in danger.