French radicals opposed women’s suffrage out of fear women would vote conservatively

Evidence

Catholics believe in fact that women in France constitute a conservative and religious element; this is just what the radicals fear: the real reason for their opposition is their fear of the swing votes that women represented. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 278

Categorization

• XREF: Identical reasoning drove opposition to women’s suffrage in Britain and the US; connects to the dynamics in the reader’s immodesty moral-panic article on how political elites frame gender issues. — connects to: The French Revolution actively suppressed women’s political participation as unnatural.; Anarchist thinkers of the left, not only conservatives, could oppose women’s liberation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 257; French radicalism’s anti-Jewish streak arose from stalled industrialization and pre-capitalist socialism — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 171 (+1 more)
• SHARE: The swing-vote fear—both sides suspected women’s vote would favor the other—is a crisp fact for a friend interested in electoral politics.

Broader Connections

• Anarchist thinkers of the left, not only conservatives, could oppose women’s liberation #expands (0.92) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 257
• The French Revolution actively suppressed women’s political participation as unnatural. #corroborates (0.82)
• French radicalism’s anti-Jewish streak arose from stalled industrialization and pre-capitalist socialism #complicates (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 171