Historical Figures

Suzanne Lacore, one of the first women in the French government

Suzanne Lacore (1875 – 1975) was a French politician. She is one of the first three women to have been part of a French government, in 1936.

Leader of the National Committee of Socialist Women

Suzanne Lacore was born on May 30, 1875 in Corrèze, into a bourgeois family. After her studies at the teacher training college, she first became a teacher and then the director of a primary school in the Dordogne.

In 1906, she joined the SFIO, "French Section of the Workers' International", a socialist political party. Women, who then did not have the right to vote or to be elected, were very few to be active and Suzanne was the only party member in the Dordogne. Leader of the National Committee of Socialist Women, she writes for the newspaper Le Travailleur du Périgord .

One of the first women in the French government

Within the party, Suzanne Lacore befriends Louise Saumoneau, another activist who is committed to women's rights and whose struggles she will share. Highly appreciated within the SFIO, she was one of the three women chosen in 1936 to belong to the Blum government, along with Irène-Joliot Curie and Cécile Brunschvicg; they are the first to belong to a French government. Suzanne is appointed Under-Secretary of State for Child Protection; it institutes training for young employees and takes measures to protect abandoned children.

Always invested in women's rights, she writes several books including Women in agriculture and The emancipation of women .

Suzanne Lacore died in November 1975, at the age of one hundred. Many schools have been named in his honor.