Olympe de Gouges

Born Marie Gouze in Montauban in 1748, she moved to Paris, adopted the pen-name Olympe de Gouges, and immersed herself in Enlightenment debates. An uncompromising social crusader, she wrote the revolutionary 1784 anti-slavery play Zamore et Mirza (The Slavery of the Blacks) at the Comédie-Française, becoming a leading member of the abolitionist Society of the Friends of the Blacks (Société des Amis des Noirs). When the 1789 French Revolution adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen while completely excluding women from political and civil rights, de Gouges published her revolutionary masterpiece, the Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (1791), declaring that "Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights." She advocated for female voting rights, divorce rights, maternal protections, and public welfare. When she courageously condemned the authoritarian violence and executions of the Jacobin dictatorship under Robespierre, she was arrested, subjected to a mock trial, and executed by guillotine on November 3, 1793. Today, she is revered worldwide as a foundational mother of modern feminist philosophy and universal human rights.