The Women's Petition to the National Assembly was produced during the French Revolution and presented to the French National Assembly in November 1789 after The March on Versailles on 5 October 1789, proposing a decree by the National Assembly to give women equality. There were thousands of petitions presented to the National Assembly and this one was not discussed. This petition showed how the authors were knowledgeable about the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which had been adopted in August 1789. They provided 6 pages of women's contributions and addressed gender roles and slavery.

The petition

The authors acknowledge how the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with its "paternal solicitude", makes it so that However, they were angered that women would be left out of being given rights and being able to partake in the reshaping of their country. They showed the inconsistency and hypocrisy of the Declaration: The petition was not well received - while there were some supportive members of the National Assembly, most argued that the women were out of their place and were suffering from the hysteria of a rapidly changing society. Because of the many repeated attempts at women's equality and suffrage that failed (including the Women's Petition to the National Assembly in November 1789), Olympe de Gouges (and many other contemporary feminists) brought feminism and the extension of egalité to women to the forefront of the debate surrounding the Revolution with documents such as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen.

Proposal for a decree

"The National Assembly, wishing to reform the greatest and most universal of abuses, and to repair the wrongs of a six-thousand-year-long injustice, has decreed and decrees as follows:"