There is more and more talk of sisterhood... But what exactly does this word mean? How has it evolved over the centuries ? Why is it coming back today in the discourse on equality between women and men ? What would sisterhood engage women in the framework of an ideal of universality that does not know a priori any gender distinction, or any other form of " specificity " ? We take stock.
For a brief history of female empowerment in single-sex education
Quiet medieval communities of nuns
You don't need to have studied Latin for 10 years to hear the etymology of sorority : it is in soror, which means sister or cousin, that the word finds its roots. It was in the Middle Ages that the word appeared to designate religious communities exclusively composed of women... " Placed under the protection and authority of men ", as Michèle Baron-Bradshaw, a doctor of information science, reminds us, these congregations are places of what we would today call empowerment : women establish their rules of life, access culture in a secure environment and pass on knowledge to each other.
The Beguines, models of emancipation from religious power and family norms
Soon, non-religious women, often widowed, reproduced the model of these single-sex communities. For example, there is the Beguines, to which the journalist Aline Kiner devoted a fictionalized monograph published in 2017. The motivation of many women to join the beguinage is to escape the (re)marriage imposed by families. But they find in the micro-cities that the group builds (with shared houses, gardens that they cultivate to feed themselves, common libraries, etc.) real paths of emancipation and responsibility.
A little too independent for the taste of some, and in particular the religious authorities at the time confused with the political authorities, these women sometimes attracted hostility, or even suffered real persecution. They defend themselves, fiercely, to preserve what they have built... But they did not escape heresy trials and as the number of hired beguines decreased, from convictions to executions, the vocations of those who would have wanted to join the community gave way to intimidation.
American students and girl scouts, the same fight !
The notion of sisterhood reappeared at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, in American universities, which have a tradition of " brotherhoods " where informal education is passed on to each other (" the school of life ") and where people build their networks : girls who enter higher education are not admitted to these boys ' clubs; Never mind, they will create their own ! The Gamma Phi Beta sorority, founded in 1874 at Syracuse University, is reputed to be the oldest of these semi-clandestine women's academic organizations.
The notion of sisterhood also appeared in the scouting movement, which opened up to girls but refused to mix genders. Still, the girls put on shorts, learn how to build huts and climb trees !
The debate on non-mixity in the feminist movement of the 1970s
In the 1970s, the question of single-sex groups was on the agenda of the feminist movement: it was a question of guaranteeing true freedom of speech (women would not dare to say the same things in the presence of men) but also of resolving the question of what was described as the " sexual division of militant labour" (when in an association, women will carry out more material and logistical tasks and men will take positions of power, visibility and/or spokesperson). The thorny debate led to a real split in the feminist movement, provoking, among other things, the opposition between the " differentialists " (who defended a feminine specificity, without necessarily pronouncing on its " essential " or cultural character) and the " universalists " (who refused the institution of gender differences).
The great dilemma of " women's networks"
But the mix/non-mix discussion is not over. It came back on the table with the emergence of "women's networks" in the 1950s and then the massification of " women's networks" from the 2000s . Rather inclined to universalist discourses, in the sense that they aim to abolish asymmetries in treatment between women and men and to fight against the glass ceiling by defending the equality of potential of women and men, these networks will gladly be formed in the first line without men. It must be said that the women who join them have their bags to empty and that male ears could bleed when they hear how they basically have on the potato. It must also be recognized that even when these networks announce themselves to be benevolent towards men and offer to welcome them into their midst, these gentlemen do not jostle for the gate.
Very quickly, however, the networks perceived that their action would be limited if it was not carried out in a mixed manner, if only because, in fact, it was mainly men who were in positions where decisions were made and budgets were granted ! Today, most of these networks are therefore clearly moving towards a mixed approach, but still have difficulty attracting men to their ranks.
When sisterhood denounces the blind spots of fraternity
Women have been " forgotten " in the foundations of citizenship !
The word sisterhood took on a second meaning in everyday language from the 2000s. It was the subject of a big media spotlight when the candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic Ségolène Royal used it in an election speech, on the eve of March 8, 2007. What she intends to emphasize is that the great principles of the Republic, enshrined in the motto " liberty, equality, fraternity " bear the symbolic mark of a " forgetting " of women.
Indeed, when the Estates General met in 1789 to bury the Ancien Régime, which instituted inequality between humans and the resulting gaps in access to freedom, they debated for a time the question of whether or not to integrate women into citizenship. Among the thinkers of the Enlightenment, including Condorcet, who was close to Olympe de Gouges, some pointed out that excluding women (and the colonized) from political rights was an original defect of the Republic. Despite this, the Revolutionaries chose " fraternity ", the raison d'être of equality in law between men... Without women.
In her book Non-Brothers in the Land of Equality, researcher Réjane Sénac explains how, from then on, women will have to conquer rights that are acquired by men. And to win them over, it will be necessary to claim, to justify oneself, to reassure people about the " risks " of trusting them (let us remember the debates on women's right to vote, marked by the fear that women " vote badly ") and to assert their " added value " to demonstrate society's " interest " in integrating them into spaces of political and economic participation.
The biases of a " universality " called by a false-neutral
But doesn't fraternity mean something like universal solidarity, without nitpicking about the terms ? Certainly, women are invited to project themselves into this fraternity which, from the moment their political rights are guaranteed, is also addressed to them. But the whole difference, according to Sénac and other thinkers on the issue of gender inequalities, is precisely that for women, access to equality implies projecting oneself into the universal, whereas for men, inclusion in the universal is more than facilitated by a republican grammar that confuses the neutral with the masculine.
Making language more " inclusive ", a break with universality ?
This echoes the reflections and discussions on the feminization of job names or on inclusive writing. Of course, the title " director ", for example, designates the function before the person, but it also draws in the background a profile of the director in the masculine, which imprints the collective imagination... And makes " director " a non-symmetrical ; This is very clearly expressed by a certain number of women who refuse this feminine version because it evokes in their eyes more the image of a school principal than a business unit boss.
The linguist Bernard Cerquiglini explains that languages that agree in gender and do not have a neuter thus place the definition of the generic under the aegis of the masculine by default... And this with a certain hypocrisy : if feminizing the titles of " director " or " company director" gives rise to passionate debates, no one is really embarrassed to talk about " cleaning lady", " cashier " or " childminder " ! This concludes the conclusion that language is far from neutral in its performative power (i.e. its ability to create and anchor reality).
Sisterhood with fraternity (and not against it): the challenge of adelphity
All of the same matrix
The lively debates on the inclusiveness of language implicitly reveal a collective anxiety: that of a risk of seeing humanity separated by the criterion of gender... This would effectively amount to opposing women and men and breaking with the principle currently desired by the majority of co-education.
It is therefore necessary to clarify in order to reassure : the issue is not to open a competition, but a war of the sexes. But to make the universal truly universal. As far as fraternity is concerned, a replacement word has been proposed for about twenty years now: adelphity. This word means : to belong to the same womb, to come from the same body. A beautiful image when you know that the wombs from which children come statistically carry girls as often as boys !
For a pacified " non-mixity " of circumstance
One question remains unanswered : that of the possible need for " non-mixity " in certain spaces and in certain moments of the lives of women and men. To decide on it, we have to rely on a certain pragmatism : in the same way that women's networks were initially formed without men to facilitate the liberation of speech on sexism, in the same way that groups of men (such as the Happy Men project of which our partners Orange or SNCF are sponsors) have formed themselves into single-sex bodies for reasons equivalent, it turns out that temporary experiments in single-sex education are effective in removing obstacles.
One thinks, for example, of the Wi-Filles program, which became BecomTech, founded by the current President of the National Digital Council Salwa Toko : having observed that the tech environment was insufficiently attractive and welcoming to women (only 15% of girls enrolled in Ecole 42, for example), due in particular to a " geek " culture that is not always very friendly to women ; It has chosen to offer coding courses exclusively for high school girls.
A safe environment where the girls were able to focus on learning, without having to waste their time and energy defending their right to take a place in the tech professions and without having to fear inappropriate remarks and behaviors that could have discouraged them from going through with their training project. At the end of the first class of Wi-Filles/BecomTech, all the girls involved in the project obtained the baccalaureate with honors and for the most part were able to join preparatory classes for engineering schools... These are mixed, of course, but they enter armed with confidence in their skills and assertiveness to assert them.
Solidarity between women, to fight the stereotype of the " queen bee " (among other clichés about women's relationships with each other)
Another proven benefit of active sisterhood (i.e. assumed as solidarity between women) is that it allows women to form alliances, not against men, but against stereotypes and everyday sexism.
A feminine solidarity that is displayed with simplicity directly clashes with the commonly accepted idea that women are real cowskins among themselves, and especially those who have reached positions of power and soap up for the next ones. Of course, there is a part of reality in this " queen bee syndrome", but there is also a whole part of fantasy, producing phenomena of repulsive images and consequently, mechanisms of self-censorship. When women show themselves to be " good friends " with each other, the myth begins to be defeated and each one can better project herself into a balanced, simple and authentic leadership.
Amplifying women's voices
Finally, active sisterhood helps to fight against the phenomena of invisibilization of women. Let's take an emblematic example: the women of Barack Obama's close staff, having noted that they were, despite parity in the team, the object of manterrupting, mansplaining and/or bropropriating, secretly implemented what they called the " amplification strategy".
In concrete terms, every time one of them was interrupted in her speech or her words did not receive the same attention as those of the men sitting around the table, they took turns repeating the said words as many times as necessary: " I would like to come back to what Jessica said..." ", " As Jessica said earlier..." " Jessica has stressed this point and it would be good to stop there" etc. Barack Obama quickly perceived what was at stake and, realizing that gender diversity does not naturally produce equality, first strengthened diversity (in all its dimensions) within his staff and secondly engaged his close teams in a process of raising awareness of ordinary sexism... Which is often hidden, like the devil, in the details. A good practice to duplicate !
