Did you know?
At FIS, we’ll soon be registering our baccalaureate candidates for the 2024 session!
So let me take you on a little historical detour:
On 17th August 1861, Victoire Daubié, at the age of 37, became the first woman to obtain the French baccalauréat.
She was “bachelier” because the female equivalent did not yet exist on diplomas. She obtained six red balls, one black ball and three white balls, in accordance with the grading system of the time. A red ball meant a favorable opinion, a white ball an abstention, and a black ball an unfavourable opinion.
By this time, Victoire Daubié was living in Paris, having become an economic journalist and lecturer. She wrote for the daily La Presse, the weekly L’Economiste français and Le Droit des femmes.
Victoire Daubié receives the bronze medal for her work “La Femme pauvre au XIXe siècle, par une femme pauvre” at the 7th Universal Exhibition held in Paris in 1867.
At the beginning of 1871, she founded the Association pour le suffrage des femmes (Association for Women’s Suffrage), and at the same time studied for a degree in literature. Although women were forbidden to attend lectures at the Sorbonne, they were allowed to sit the exams. Victoire Daubié obtained her Licence ès Lettres (arts degree) on 28th October, becoming the first woman to do so, being denoted with the masculine title Licencié, rather than the feminine Licenciée because, like the baccalauréat diploma, the title existed only in the masculine form. She received her diploma in 1872, with the word “sieur” crossed out and replaced by “Mademoiselle“, with a letter of congratulations from the minister Jules Simon. She then decided to prepare a doctorate on La condition de la femme dans la société romaine, but died before she could present it.
