Ghénia Avril de Sainte-Croix (pen name, Savioz; pseudonym, de Sainte-Croix; 1855 – 21 March 1939) was a French author, journalist, feminist and pacifist. For many years she led the French branch of the International Abolitionist Federation, which sought to abolish state regulation of prostitution and fought trafficking in women. She advised the French government and the League of Nations on women's issues. She was vice-president of the International Council of Women from 1920 and President of the National Council of French Women from 1922 to 1932.
Life
Early years
Adrienne-Pierrette-Eugénie (Ghénia) Glaisette was born in 1855 in the village of Carouge near Geneva, Switzerland to Marc Glaisette and Marie-Louise Savuiz. She spoke several languages and traveled widely. As a young woman she seems to have spent much time in central Europe. Her portrait by Teodor Axentowicz was exhibited in the Salon in 1893, and published in . She was mentioned in society newspapers. The Gentlewoman reports her presence at a matinee dance given the Baroness de Montebello, apparently her aunt. In the mid-1890s she published a series of children's stories set in Eastern Europe. She signed the stories and her first newspaper articles "Savioz". The Parisian newspapers reported that she was present at the celebrations of the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898) organized by the Cuban colony of Paris.
Sainte-Croix came from the haute société protestante (Protestant high society) and shared its philanthropic tradition. In the 1890s she began to participate in the Conference of Versailles, an annual meeting of Protestant women's charities. Representatives of social reform groups fighting pornography, alcoholism and prostitution spoke at these conferences. It was through this that she became involved in the abolitionist campaign to end government-regulated prostitution. Starting in the late 1890s she began to publish journalistic investigations into the plight of prostitutes and working women. Sainte-Croix wrote for La Fronde, which was founded late in 1897, as did Marguerite Durand, Séverine, Marie Bonnevial and Clémence Royer. She published a remarkable article in this paper on the conditions in the prison of Saint-Lazare, where prostitutes were held. She spoke on the question of female journalists at the 1899 congress of the International Council of Women (ICW) in London.
Eugénie Glaisette married the civil engineer François Avril in a civil ceremony in May 1900 when she was aged 45. They lived at 1 avenue Malakoff (now avenue Raymond Poincaré) in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, in an apartment overlooking the place du Trocadéro. The marriage did nothing to reduce her activism. No doubt it was due to her husband that she was able to hold several feminist meetings in the Civil Engineers premises at 19 rue Blanche.
Feminist leader
Sainte-Croix headed the French branch of the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF) for many years from 1900, while also acting as secretary general of the National Council of French Women (; CNFF) from 1903 onward. She founded the halfway house (Liberating Work) in 1901 to help young women leave prostitution after their release from prison. The charity gave them education, job training and long term counselling. In 1904 she spoke in Zurich and Geneva on the subject of trafficking in women. Between 1904 and 1908 she was a member of a government commission to investigate the activities of the vice squad. She was the only woman to serve on this commission.
From 1905 to 1907 Sainte-Croix was a member of the independent Coulon-Chavagnes commission that studied the marital laws in France, under which women were disadvantaged, with a view to overhauling the civil code. She was a founding member and member of the board of the League of Human Rights and the Citizen (). Sainte-Croix published a stream of articles promoting the cause of women. In 1907 she published a book entitled in which she refuted the arguments of Catholics and nationalists that feminism was "un-French". She made the case that the movement had its roots in the fight for liberty of the French Revolution.