Isabelle Gatti de Gamond

Who was Isabelle Gatti de Gamond?

Isabelle Laure Gatti de Gamond was an Italo-Belgian educationalist, feminist, and politician.

Isabelle Gatti was the second of four daughters born to Giovanni Gatti, an Italian artist, and feminist writer Zoé de Gamond, of Brussels. Born in Paris, her family moved to Brussels when she was five, having lost their fortune in a failed phalanstère—a utopian community inspired by the writings of utopian socialist Charles Fourier—at Cîteaux.

Her mother, an inspector of girl's schools, died in 1854, and the family's genteel poverty forced Isabelle to seek employment. She found this in Poland, working as a governess with a Polish noble family. It was at this time that she became an autodidact, teaching herself Ancient Greek, Latin, and philosophy.

She returned to Brussels in 1861, and continued her education by following public courses organised by the city government. Her ideas on education had already been formed, and in 1862 she launched the journal L'Education de la Femme which championed the cause of schooling for girls.

In 1864, with the financial assistance of the city council, she launched the first systematic courses of secondary female education. Exceptionally for Belgium of the time, this venture was entirely independent of the Roman Catholic Church, and provided the very first organised secular education for women in Belgium.