Books & ideas

Algorithms and the female silhouette

Hélène Bourdeloie & Solenne Carof — 2026-02-17T06:30:00Z

The female silhouette – understood as the body's visible form and socially perceived appearance – has long been shaped by social norms. In the age of social media, these norms are intensifying, prompting, in response, the rise of so-called “body-positive” movements.

Marilyn Monroe does not exist

Élisa Goudin — 2026-02-12T08:30:00Z

From Salomé to Lolita, representations of “temptresses” haunt male fantasies. They entail a woman who has said “yes” before she has even been asked anything. And women who “fire up” men's desire must pay the price.

The Joys and Miseries of Marriage

Céline Surprenant — 2025-07-15T12:34:39Z

The “double life” of the great English novelist George Eliot combines the literary field with the experience of marriage. Her works form the crucible for reflections on love, social norms and freedom.

The Earth Mother vs. God the Father

Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod — 2025-06-26T06:30:00Z

Christianity is based on an egalitarian indifference to sexual difference, but in practice treats women very unequally. God the father has replaced the pagan idea of the Earth Mother, who celebrates humanity's shared belonging to Gaia.

Female, French, Arab

Mariem Guellouz — 2024-12-10T07:30:00Z

How have French women of Arab and North African descent become the subject of a collective fantasy? If the language of immigration reveals collective imaginaries and social and discursive practices that are worth analyzing, then the word beurette also deserves our attention.

Africanist

Elara Bertho — 2024-01-16T11:08:00Z

In her memoir, the renowned French researcher Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch looks back on her Jewish childhood, her first experience of Africa in the 1960s, the neo-colonialist stance of some academics, and her intellectual and political career, in which anti-racism has played a pivotal role.

Becoming respectable

Béatrice Bouillon — 2024-01-02T08:00:00Z

How do working-class and lower middle-class women experience their youth in rural environments? Based on a study of several rural and exurban spaces, Yaelle Amsellem-Mainguy revisits the question of women's social trajectories.

Survivors: Women and Migration

Laura Odasso — 2023-04-05T10:55:32Z

C. Schmoll invites us to feminize our view of migration towards Europe. Public migration policies select women according to frequently incompatible principles of morality, vulnerability and utility, and determine the positions that they will come to occupy in our societies.

Mom's Emancipation

Géraldine Farges — 2023-03-30T07:30:00Z

By retracing the itineraries of their mothers, two authors reconstruct the lifestyles of two teachers in the 1960s and 1970s and their quest for economic and intellectual emancipation.

Empress Eugénie: France's First Lady

Murielle Gaude-Ferragu — 2023-02-28T08:30:00Z

Despite the black legend that surrounds her name, the Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III's wife, was the embodiment of maternity and Christian virtues, even as she played a political and diplomatic role.