Women's Activism NYC

Madeleine Palletier

1874 - 1939

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Madeleine Pelletier is an Feminist and Socialist Leader, Doctor, writer and a Pacifist. She was a french Physician and the first women to have an internship in psychiatry and has became an controversial socialist journalist and a feminist. Madeleine was in a convent school where she had went for her education and she had never gotten married or had children. She had left school in 1886 and had passed her baccalaureate. She had studied in anthropology and medicine from 1898-1906 and was the first women to have been admitted to a psychiatric intern in 1903 and was also active in freemasonry from 1904 to 1946 and had led the women's solidarity from 1906 to 1912, she had founded the La Suffragiste from 1907 to 1914, Pelletier was also fined for have breaking a window at a polling place in 1908. Madeleine Pelletier had passed away in asylum in 1939, and she has been an advocate of women's rights. Madeleine was born in Paris and her parent's sold fruits and vegetables from the front room. Her father was Louis Pelletier and had came to Paris to had become a cab driver, and when Madeleine was four he had a stroke and wasn't that easily available to work, when Madeleine was in her teens her dad had passed away. Madeleine mother Anne de Passavy was a domestic in Paris, and married Louis. She had concluded that her mother had about 11 miscarriages. Madeleine and her mother had a tense relationship, she wanted to become an soldier and her mother had an traditional idea for women, their contradicting beliefs would often collide and there would be conflict. Madeleine would teach herself and she had to take the baccalaureate examinations, but women were allowed to take the bacs , but they had no preparation and needed tutors. Her mother had tension and were in a money crisis, so she had went to study by herself and had passed the exam in July 1896 and 1897 and gained a certificate in Physics, Chemistry and natural science. She was a Medicine faculty member in University of Paris and the faculty had 3,746 men and 179 women students. SHe was also denied admission for the final exam, and had failed the exam because she didn't have time to prepare and was denied a second chance. From 1904 to 1914, Pelletier had worked on promoting feminism and socialism. Pelletier would also bring attention to her clothing because mostly it was of men attire. Dressing as a man she was proclaiming ''I am your equal." Pelletieer was also pro-abortion and said "Our right to control over our bodies is absolute."

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