The historical development culminating in the American and French Revolutions in the second half of the eighteenth century finally succeeded, in most Western countries, in destroying feudal bondage and in granting civil rights to individuals. What has been achieved since then, at a very slow pace and to an unsatisfactory degree, has included a socially and legally equal status for women. Women participated actively in the French Revolution. Thousands of women, for instance, forced the royal family to leave the Versailles Palace on October 6, 1789, and to take residence in Paris, where in the people's