‘Reform Not Enough’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30978, 7 February 1966, Page 2

‘Reform Not Enough’

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copgright) PARIS, Feb. 6. Frenchwomen have this week taken a stride towards legal equality with their menfolk—but not far enough, in the opinion of some of their organisations.

The rigid Napoleonic Code provisions on marital status have been broken by the operation of a new Governmentsponsored law which came into force on February 1. But critics of the move say women still remain what Simone de Beauvoir calls “the second sex.”

Housewives no longer need their husbands’ permission to open their own bank accounts, run their own businesses, continue in a profession, dispose of personal property and private incomes, buy stocks and shares and have a say in where they shall live and how the children shall be educated.

But the husband remains official head of the family, and his signature is needed on hire-purchase agreements. The break with the old Code Napoleon of 1804 was initiated by General de Gaulle as head of the post-war provisional

Government when he gave Frenchwomen the vote for the first time.

The new advance brings the Frenchwoman up to the status enjoyed by generations of wives in Britain, the United States, and many other countries.

The change has been widely welcomed as a step towards what is called the “decolonisation of married women.” But the Democratic Women’s movement and the French League for Women’s Rights describe the new law as a “reformette” —a petty reform.

Women jurists have joined in, criticising the measure as imprecise, and predicting it would be several years be-

fore exact interpretations would be achieved.

One woman lawyer, Colette Piat, said “the Napoleonic code was brutal, but at least it was clear.” Another, Kraemer Bach, spokesman for the Democratic Women, the Women’s Republican Circle and the Association of Women Jurists, said the notion of the man as head of the family should be abolished. It was also important to make sure that household possessions were really shared and not treated as the husband’s property. The French newspaper, “Le Nouveau Candide,” called the new law “Napoleon’s second Waterloo.”