Are Women’s Interests and Men’s Interests Convergent in National Sovereignty? On a few Discourses on the Representation of Women “as such”

In a French context of family-based electoral laws and a doctrine of political representation which prohibits any idea of intermediate or particular interests, what about alternative proposals which defend the need for representation of women as such? By “representation of women as such”, we mean the challenge of the universalist doctrine, regardless of how it was interpreted and applied at the time: either by advocates of women’s right to vote as undifferentiated individuals, like Condorcet and Guyomar, or by electoral laws establishing the capacity of the sole paterfamilias to speak on behalf of the entire nation. The aim here is to examine the rare alternatives expressed in favor of a vote for women ""as women"", bearers of specific interests, i.e. not representable by men seen as bearers of particular individuals, almost nonsense in the French doctrine of political representation. These rare alternatives, examples of which can be found in the French-language corpus of the revolutionary decade, have in common, despite their differences, of opening a breach in dominant thought and practices, including in universalist thought for which, until today, there are no particular interests representable in the sovereign nation.