Women have been involved in the yellow vests movement since its inception. This is a result of women on the whole being more affected by poverty in France than their male counterparts, in part because many are heads-of-household and need to take time off from paid employment to give birth to children. Their role is greater than most past social movements in France because of the economically precarious position that many women in the country find themselves in.
Two women played critical roles in starting the movement. Priscillia Ludosky was one of the first people involved, after launching it inadvertently on 29 May 2018 by posting an online petition about the need for lower taxes, reducing salaries and pensions of public officials and creating an implementation of the citizens' initiative referendum. After she had heavily promoting it in September, it began to really gain traction in October 2018. Jacline Mouraud played another critical role that month in creating the movement, when she posted a Facebook video that went viral about France's proposed eco-tax to which she was opposed.
Act I saw women like Laëtitia Dewalle and Marine Charrette-Labadie organize local marches. Both would become key local spokespeople for their regions. Act II saw continued involvement of women, along with gender specific violence targeting women of color who were stuck in traffic as a result of the protests. An 80-year-old woman was killed in Marseille during Act III. During the same time period, research was published that said poor working women in France as a percentage of the population grew by around 2% from two years prior. Act IV saw the creation of a Facebook group "Femmes gilets jaunes" by Karen, a 42-year-old from Marseille. It also saw President Emmanuel Macron mention the presence of women in yellow vest protests, though he failed to address any specific needs of poor women. Act VI saw Eric Drouet arrested and key female figures in the movement condemn his arrest. It also saw an anti-Semitic act committed by men on the Paris metro against a female Holocaust survivor. Act VII saw the first of the yellow vest women's march taking place on 6 January, the Sunday after the main events of the Act. Act X saw social justice around women's needs begin to feature as an issue that needed to be addressed. Act XII saw women presenting female specific demands for the first time.
The yellow vest movement has birthed several political parties, two of which are being led by women. Citizen-Led Rally was created in January 2019 by Ingrid Levavasseur to try to effect political change. The Risen was founded by Jacline Mouraud with the intention of running candidates in France's local elections in 2020, sitting out the 2019 European Parliament elections. It was positioning itself as neither left wing, nor right wing.
Background Of the class of people represented by the yellow vest movement, 45% are women. 52.1% of poor adults in France are women. Women on the whole are more affected by poverty in France than their male counterparts, in part because many are heads-of-household. Many women have to spend time out of the workforce to give birth to children, and are unable to make up the salary loss and the consequent government contribution towards retirement payments. Government models for social payments have largely been based around the needs of men, with the assumption that a head-of-household is a man married to a woman who has children. At the same time, women across France are subject to daily sexual harassment and insults, with men on the street calling them whores and sluts.
Women's role in the yellow vest movement is greater than in most past social movements in France because of the economically precarious position that many women in the country find themselves in.
As a group, poor women in France have never been specifically targeted by campaigners. At the same time, most poor women have not self-mobilized prior to the yellow vest movement to articulate the needs of their gender-based class. Some of this has been attributed to the feminist movement in France being led by liberals, who prioritize issues like anti-racism, multiculturalism, and the needs of women in other countries ahead of French women.
Origin Women have been involved with the yellow vest movement from the start, serving through their acts as catalysts for the movement and as spokespeople even before the movement took to the street.
Priscillia Ludosky was one of the first people involved in the yellow vest movement, launching it inadvertently on 29 May 2018 by posting an online petition about the need for "lower taxes on essential goods, the implementation of the citizens' initiative referendum, lower pensions and salaries of senior officials and elected officials". Initially, no one gave any attention to the petition, and went about life as usual from June to September 2018. In mid-September she tried to get more attention for her petition. She started reaching out on more social networks and to local media. Eventually, her petition was picked up nationally by Le Parisien. Because of her surname, some journalists initially assumed she was of Polish descent or married to a Polish man.
Seeking to gain more support for the grievances listed in the petition and to combat rising fuel prices, Eric Drouet reached out to Ludosky in October 2018. Drouet was interested in organizing action to protest fuel prices, and their concerns became joined. The pair together called for the first protest on 17 November 2018. While the biggest protest was in Paris, Ludosky participated in a 17 November protest near her home. Meanwhile, her petition had 938,325 signatories by 20 November 2018. On November 27, the pair met for the first time at the Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition to share their message from Ludosky's petition with the government.
According to The Guardian and other news sources, Jacline Mouraud has "been widely credited with starting the yellow vests movement" (). Mouraud's visibility in the movement came as a surprise to her and others. At the time, she was earning less than €1,000 a month and her most valuable possession was her car, a black diesel SUV that she had bought ten years earlier for €11,000. Some months, she was earning only €800 per month.
Mouraud's involvement in the movement began in October 2018 when she posted a Facebook video that went viral about France's proposed eco-tax to which she was opposed. The video was 4 minutes and 38 seconds in length, and attracted over 6 million views. In it, she asked President Macron: “What are you doing with the money apart from buying new dishes at the Élysée Palace and building yourself swimming pools?” The video was not her first of its kind, as Mouraud had made a similar one in April 2017.
Technology Women have been enabled during these protests because of an ability to harness Facebook as an organizing tool. Both Facebook and Twitter have also served a key role in letting marginalized voices be heard by others in their class and the media establishment.
Timeline regarding female participation
17 November 2018: "Act I"
Women were among the organizers and participants in Act I.
Laëtitia Dewalle organized the first yellow vest protest in the Val-d'Oise. She organized local action on a Facebook page titled "représentante du Val d'Oise". Following Act I, she was part of a group demanding a referendum on the legitimacy on the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.
Marine Charrette-Labadie's involvement predated the 17 November 2018 protests, when she served as a local organizer in advance for Act I. She got involved because she felt as if she could not sit idly by and do nothing. Most of Charrette-Labadie's activity took place on Facebook. As a local organizer, she was part of a group of protesters who lifted toll gates in Brives on 17 November 2018. Earlier that week, Charrette-Labadie had participated in protests in front of the tax office in the city.
24 November 2018: "Act II" Act II took place on the same day as international protest violence against women day. French organizers of local events were nervous that the yellow vest protests would eclipse their march's message. Organizers took to social media to ask yellow vest marchers not to impede their own events. They were seeking to capitalize on the #NousToutes movement, which had seen 4,000 women in France come out to protest violence against women in September, with 600 of those protests being in Paris. Concern about yellow vest interference came after one local organizer in Bourg-en-Bresse canceled because she feared women would not be able to get to it because of yellow vest imposed road blockages.
Women were again among the participants of this act. Some traveled for hours via bus to Paris, bringing with them their male companions. By the end of Act II, women had met, networked and begun discussing the particular needs of women in the yellow vest movement.
Women were also subjected to racist abuse during Act II on the part of activists in general. A black woman, after being stopped by protesters at a roundabout in Cognac, got out of her car, where her children were sitting. She was confronted by protesters, who told her to go home and no one wants to hear about the problems of black people in France. At another roundabout in Auchan-Fayet, a Muslim woman in a veil had been stuck in traffic for an hour as a result of yellow vest related road closures. They would not let her pass until she removed her veil. Yellow vest protesters also made monkey noises at her.
Ahead of Act II on 24 November 2017, while acting as a yellow vest spokesperson, Dewalle said protesters had no intention to march on Champ-de-Mars. Rather, they were holding a street protest. She made clear to the media following Act II that the yellow vest movement was apolitical, and not aligned with any French unions. She also recognized that during Act II, the protest was infiltrated by extremists from both the left and right, expressing regret that the police did not take any steps to stop them.
Shortly after Act II, the yellow vests put forward a list of their desires. One specifically mentioned women, demanding: "Respect male / female parity: alignment of the qualification and the position held at equal pay."
Act II saw Drouet talk openly about his intention to "enter the Elysee". It also saw another yellow vest activist, Maxime Nicolle, question the timing of the 2018 Strasbourg attack and imply it was a false flag. These two developments caused Ludosky to largely disappear from the yellow vest movement.
Marine Charrette-Labadie, then a 22-year-old, emerged as one of the early spokesperson in the "yellow vests" () movement. She was one of eight official spokespeople. This group was announced on 26 November 2018. During her time as a spokesperson, Charrette-Labadie was contacted constantly by people in the movement asking for updates as to what had been accomplished and by members of the media seeking comment. She was also being contacted by members of many political parties who were seeking to align themselves with the yellow vest leadership.
Charrette-Labadie was in Paris around 25 November 2019 for a meeting with the government, where she served as one of the representatives of the movement. After consulting people on Facebook, she and other representatives said they had two things they wanted the government to do: create a citizen's assembly and lower all taxes on people. Her participation was criticized by others in the movement, including local Cana leader Christian Lapauze who said they were not consulted about any demands and the representatives had no legitimacy. On 27 November 2018, she was one of six yellow vests activists to participate in a LCI program called "The Great Explanation" ().