The Antigones have been asked by the Ecosprinter to write a tribune in their online participative magazine.  This was the occasion for us to explain who we are, what this year’s theme, transmission, means, and how it is related to environmental matters. 

In today’s France it’s a tricky business to talk of women and feminism, as debate is rendered difficult by ideology and its inherent contradictions. International news, from Spain or Eastern Europe, creates tension. The media focus on themes – the right to abortion, parity in the workplace, the sharing of parental leave, the introduction without consultation into schools of what is commonly called « gender studies », on the pretext of combatting sexist stereotypes – that tend to obscure the complexities of the subject. Disagreement and conflict are rife; nobody knows what the real question is, or who truly defend the cause of women today.

There is an urgent need to get away from this political and ideological posturing, to base our reflection on a vision of society as a whole, and to consider calmly men and women. This wider vision, based on the reciprocal complementarity of the sexes that we see in daily experience, is what we want to go into, from the women’s stand point. For women we are, fighting to live out freely a femininity recognised by society. We do not plead for some mathematical equality between supposedly identical individuals.