Olympe de Gouges

Who was Olympe de Gouges?

Olympe de Gouges, born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.

She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, de Gouges became increasingly politically involved. She became an outspoken advocate for improving the condition of slaves in the colonies as of 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male–female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her close relation with the Girondists.