Françoise Thébaud

Françoise Thébaud was born in 1952.

She studied at the École normale supérieure de lettres et sciences humaines, and completed a 3rd cycle thesis entitled Quand nos grand-mères donnaient la vie: la maternité en France dans l'entre-deux guerres (When our grandmothers gave life: motherhood in France in the interwar period). She completed the Agrégation d'histoire in 1975.

Thébaud was a teacher-researcher from 1985 to 1997 at Lumière University Lyon 2 and then, in 1995, presented a university habilitation dissertation in history entitled Écrire l’histoire des femmes: bilans et perspectives (Writing the history of women: assessments and perspectives), at Lumière University Lyon 2. She served as professor of contemporary history at Avignon University, from 1997 to 2007, before assuming the title of professor emeritus. Affiliated with Institut des Etudes Genre de l’Université de Genève (Institute of Gender Studies of the University of Geneva) and Labex EHNE (Écrire une histoire nouvelle de l'Europe), some of Thébaud's research has focused on:

history of feminisms and feminists

social and political history of motherhood

writing and epistemology of history: from the history of women to the history of gender

In her book Quand nos grands-mères donnaient la vie (When Our Grandmothers Gave Life) (1986), Thébaud draws on censuses, demographic and economic statistics, medical theses, obstetrics and childcare manuals, to reconstruct the experience of motherhood. She shows in particular that pronatalist propaganda pushes women to be convinced that childbearing is a national duty, at the same time as an accomplishment of their nature. In her review of the book, the historian Marie-France Morel writes that Thébaud proposes "new issues in the history of women", as well as a questioning of the medical power and the functioning of maternities.

In 1995, she co-founded the history journal, Clio. Femmes, genre, histoire, serving as its co-director from 1995 to 2012. In 2003, she was co-editing it with Michelle Zancarini-Fournel; in 2008, she was co-editing it with Rebecca Rogers. Until 2009, she served as president of the Mnémosyne (association) association for the development of the history of women and gender.

Thébaud edited volume 5 of Le XXe siècle (from the Histoire des femmes collection, Plon-Laterza, 1992; reissue completed in paperback in 2002) and published Écrire l'histoire des femmes (ENS Éditions, 1998). She also co-edited Féminismes et identités nationales (Feminisms and National Identities) (Lyon, Center Jacques Cartier, 1998) and Le Siècle des féminismes (Editions de l'Atelier, 2004). Her La Femme au temps de la Guerre de 14 (Paris: Stock, 1986; revised ed. 2014), is considered the classic work regarding the experience of French women during World War I.