Quote by Olympe de Gouges: “A woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.”

If a society is willing to execute a woman for her political views, it has already acknowledged she is a political agent. Gouges argues this is a contradiction: you cannot hold someone responsible for their politics while denying them the right to participate in politics.

Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791, two years after the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man had famously omitted women. She addressed it directly to Queen Marie Antoinette, and was guillotined two years later — the scaffold she mentioned became her own fate.

French political activist and playwright who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791, directly challenging the exclusion of women from the rights proclaimed by the French Revolution. She was guillotined in 1793 for her political writings.