A group of French feminists are saying non to the declaration of the rights of man, which they say is sexist and an outdated example of the French exception culturelle, reports The Guardian.
The Droits Humains collective is calling on France to stop leaving women out of the idea of universal liberties.
The declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen was approved by the national assembly in 1789 at the time of the French revolution.
The collective wants the French government to immediately abandon the term “Droits de l’Homme” and has launched a petition calling for “human rights for everyone”.
“It is past the time to be debating or arguing about the relevance of this change of terminology, which is self-evident,” the petition says. “This group will disband once the institutions of the French republic have made tangible changes. Otherwise, it will remain active for as long as necessary.”
The group says countries including Spain, Italy and Germany and French-speaking parts of Canada and Switzerland have already dropped use of the term.
“The expression ‘rights of man’ makes women, their issues and their battles invisible and we become more and more isolated,” Noé Le Blanc, from the collective, told Le Parisien.
The preamble to the 1789 declaration mentions “rights of man” three times, and the words “men” or “man” are used in four of the declaration’s 17 articles.
Valentine Zuber, a French specialist in history and human rights, said the term was chosen “specifically and without ambiguity to be male and exclude women”.