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Jeanne Deroin Born Jeanne-Françoise Deroin December 31, 1805 in Paris; emigrated to England August 1852; died in England April 2, 1894; marr ied M. Desroches; embroiderer, schoolteacher, journalist, activist for the rights of women and workers.

Born into a working-class family, Jeanne Deroin spent her youth in poverty, earning her living as an embroiderer. An avid reader and an ardent then disillusioned republican, by 1831 articles in the Globe had drawn her to the Saint Simonians. While skeptical of their religious tenets, she agreed with their views on the emancipation of women. By the end of 1831, she was atten ding their meetings and later made a profession of faith that stopped short of her complete conversion. After the women members of the sect received their apostolic mission of helping the working class, under the name Jeanne Victoire she contributed articles to the Saint Simonian working women's journal, the Femme libre. Insisting upon a union of equality, and perhaps chastity, she married a fellow Saint Simonian, M. Desroches, in a civil ceremony. They had three children. After sev eral failures due to poor handwriting, she earned a certificate and in the 1840s opened a school for working-class children.

The revolution of 1848 returned her to public life. Using her own family name so as not to implicate her husband, Deroin promoted the rights of women and the organization of work. She also opposed the exploitation of children and the harsh treatment of convicts. She wrote petitions and articles, founded clubs, journals, and economic associations, and attempted t o run for legislative office. In March 1848, she joined the staff of Eugenie Niboyet's Voix des femmes and contributed articles arguing for women's equality. With Desirée Gay she founded the working women's Société d'éducation mutuelle des femmes that published the short-lived Politique des femmes (June and August 1848), gave free courses to workingwomen, and printed her own course on social law. When the Politique des femme s could not raise a government-imposed security bond, Deroin replaced it with the Opinion des femmes, but published only one issue.

In late 1848 she attended democratic-socialist banquets that toasted women's rights. Assisted by Hortense Wild and Olinde Rodrigues, she refounded the Opinion des femmes as a monthly journal devoted to the rights of women and the organization of work (January-August, 1849). As the major contributor to the journal, she pub lished articles defining "woman's mission," appealing for women's solidarity, rebutting Proudhon's relegation of women to the home, and proposing self-governing economic associations. She announced her candidacy for the May 1849 elections to the legislative assembly, but failed to get support from the democratic socialists groups. In the last issue of the journal, she published a revolutionary plan for the organization of work, the Association Fraternelle et Solidaire de toutes les Associati ons. The union was Deroin's vehicle for both sexual equality and economic reform, since it gave women full rights and reorganized work in the unified associations to eliminate wages, control distribution, consumption, and production, and raise credit. The government reacted to the article with a high security bond and Deroin ceased publication.

By the end of 1849, some associations had accepted a modified version of the general union and elected Deroin to the central committee. In May 1850, the group was arrested and Deroin sentenced to six-months in prison for political conspiracy. During that time she wrote an article on credit, an appeal to the government to allow women's right to petition, and, with her co-prisoner Pauline Roland, a letter to the Women's Rights Convention in Massachusetts urging women to join the ranks of the workers.

Released from prison in July 1851, Deroin began work on a women's almanac that was published the following year. After the D ecember 2, 1851 coup, she assisted the proscripts and their families until she fled to England in August 1852. Her husband's death in France left her with the care of her two younger children. In 1853 and 1854, she published two more women's almanacs. Her attempts to establish a mutual aid society for other exiles and a school for their children failed. She supported herself and her family by giving lessons and doing embroidery and later received a small pension granted to the proscripts by the Third Republic. In the early 1880s, Deroin briefly returned to writing. Correspondence with her old friend Hortense Wild reveals her continued condemnation of marriage as slavery and an unshaken faith in association as the only means to attain peace. Leon Richer published her exchange of letters on the problems of illegitimate children in his Le Droit des femmes. When she died in 1894, she had spent almost half her life in forced, and then voluntary exile. In his eulogy, William Mo rris praised her courage and devotion to socialist principles.

Jeanne Deroin (31 December 1805-2 April 1894) was a French socialist feminist.

Born in Paris, Deroin became a seamstress. In 1831, she joined the followers of utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon. For her required statement of her belief in their principles, she wrote a forty-four page essay, in part inspired by Olympe de Gouges' "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen", in which Deroin argued against the idea that women were inferior to men, and likened marriage to slavery. Despite this, in 1832, she married Antoine Ulysse Desroches, a fellow Saint-Simonite, but refused to take his surname"Deroin, Jeanne", "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"] and insisted on taking a vow of equality in a civil ceremony. [http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/dh/deroin.htm Jeanne Deroin] , Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions]

Later in 1832, Deroin was part of a group of working women who, in protest at the Saint-Simonites hierarchical and religious nature left the group, and became supporters of the socialist Charles Fourier. They began publishing "La Femme Libre", the first newspaper for women in France, for which she wrote under the pseudonym Jeanne Victoire.

During this period, Deroin qualified as a schoolteacher. From 1834, she focussed on this work, and on bringing up her children and those of Flora Tristan.

Deroin was a prominent figure during the Revolutions of 1848, campaigning on the rights of women and against the exploitation of children and harsh treatment of convicts. With other Fourierist women such as Pauline Roland, Eugenie Niboyet and Desirée Gay, she launched a socialist feminist newspaper and club, the "Voix des Femmes". She personally led calls for women's suffrage. The group was soon forced to close, but Deroin worked with Gay to found the Association Mutuelle des Femmes and "Politique des Femmes" newspaper. The organisation gave free courses to working women. "Politique des Femmes" soon found itself unable to raise a 5,000 franc security bond required by the government. Deroin replaced it with "Opinion des Femmes", but this lasted only one issue.

In January 1849, Deroin relaunched "Opinion des Femmes". She continued her campaigns, and in particular argued against the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Deroin stood in the Department of the Seine at the French legislative election, 1849, becoming the first woman in France to stand in a national election. She stood for the Comité Démocrate Sociale, but received only fifteen votes, in part because she would not have been permitted to take a seat. [ [http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2003/deroin.html Jeanne Deroin] , Sunshine for Women] She then became the Deputy President of the Société Populaire pour le Progression et la Réalisation de la Science Sociale, which campaigned for a peaceful social revolution.

In "Opinion des Femmes" last issue, of August 1849, Deroin called for the formation of the Association Fraternelle et Solidaire de Toutes les Associations, seeing it as a chance to transform the loose co-operative movement into a revolutionary general union which could organise work through its affiliated associations, eliminate wages and control the economy.

The National Assembly gave her and Gay 12,000 francs to form an association of women seamstresses making ladies' underwear, and a fraternal association along a watered-down version of her proposal was initially able to link together more than one hundred existing organisations. Deroin was elected to its Central Committee, alongside Roland. However, the Association was gradually repressed by the Government, and in May 1850, its offices were raided, forty-six members being arrested.

Deroin was imprisoned until June 1851, using this time to campaign further on women's rights. She wrote to groups including the Women's Rights Convention in Massachusetts and the Sheffield Female Political Association, giving advice on tactics. On her release, she returned to teaching, but in 1852, fearing re-arrest, she travelled to London with her two youngest children. She lived in Shepherd's Bush, where she worked teaching and embroidering. She also published three women's almanacs and remained active in supporting workers' co-operatives.

In 1862, Deroin founded a boarding school for children of French exiles, aiming to admit even the poorest children, but the project did not prove financially viable. In 1871, she was granted a small pension by the new Government of France. Although she remained in London, she kept up a correspondence with socialist feminists and women's suffrage campaigners in France, such as Léon Richer, Madame Arnaud and Hubertine Auclert.

In the 1880s, Deroin joined the Socialist League, and its founder William Morris delivered the oration at her funeral.