The role of protestant women during the 20th century

They were created in 1911 and comprised the “patronage committee”, mainly for the bourgeois class who wished to bring “material and moral support to isolated young women” often coming from the provinces to find a job.

The pioneer French scouting movement was created in 1912, and flourished especially after WWI and WWII. During the wars women were burdened with heavy responsibilities at home as well as in the companies their husbands had left. They had to develop their fraternity and solidarity skills as well as their justified authority, all fundamental in scouting.

Better known as the “Fédé”, it assembled young women and young men who had access to the highest university diplomas, endowing them with a great freedom of expression. Within the Fédé theology was reviewed through Karl Barth’s views which played an important role ; but the movement also dealt with the current political issues, such as conscientious objection, decolonisation, and understanding the communist world…

It was founded in 1946 to answer specific questions of young and not so young women, such as:

• the balance between professional and family lives,
• the problems with their husbands and birth-control,
• the responsibilities within the Church,
• the outlook on political problems.

Such were the topics discussed at annual meetings, and in the 6 yearly issues of the “Bulletin”. Their points of view were to enrich and stimulate the protestant world in general.

It was already outlined in the emancipation movement at the end of the 19th century. But women were to be definitely considered as pastors on equal par with men in Lutheran and Reformed churches only in the 1960s.