Olympe de Gouges

Olympe de Gouges (May 7, 1748 – November 3, 1793), born Marie Gouze, is a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reach a large audience.

She begins her career as a playwright in the early 1780s.

As political tension rises in France, Olympe de Gouges becomes increasingly politically engaged.

She becomes an outspoken advocate for improving the condition of slaves in the colonies of 1788.

At the same time, she begins writing political pamphlets.

Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist who demands that French women be given the same rights as French men.

In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenges the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality.

She is executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her close relation with the Girondists.

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