Women on the margins? Intellectual sociability and citizenship in belle epoque France

Prosopographic analysis of three gender-inclusive civic associations, the Union pour l'Action Morale (later Union pour la Ve 'rite '), the Socie 'te' de Sociologie de Paris, and the Socie 'te' pour l'E ' ducation Sociale, demonstrates that at the turn of the twentieth century intellectual sociability and the networks it fostered enabled certain well- connected women to practice citizenship without the right to vote. If gender inclusive, these enterprises were far from egalitarian. But their social composition and the sociability that characterized them facilitated women's access to the public sphere, an important dimension of citizenship. For this reason, the article concludes, models of citizenship without voting rights that emerged during the period appealed to contemporary women, to whom they seemed much less contradictory than we find them a century later.