Women had a unique ability to serve as Resistants, in some part due to views among many Nazis that women were harmless and non-threatening. This misconception among the Germans meant that women were by default granted much greater latitude in moving around — and when apprehended were much more likely to convince officers or soldiers of their innocence. Often overlooked, they served as consummate spies. Often speeding along by bicycle, women devised all manner of ways to hide items in their purses and baskets. They used baby carriages as a sort of camouflage to transport goods. French women were unrivaled in their aplomb at casually chatting with German officers while sneaking Resistance materials to their next destination. Women were invaluable as messengers and couriers; they carried everything from arms and ammunition to intelligence and Resistance propaganda. They also rescued airmen shot down by German forces, and operated what were called "escape lines" that served to usher US and British servicemen into safety. They gathered military intelligence (some of these women even worked with Madames in brothels that were frequented by German soldiers and where information could be gathered secretly), decoded messages, managed underground publications, ran guns, provided support for strikers, and carried out sabotage of German communications. They worked in organizational capacities as typists and counterfeiters, and proved themselves brave and extraordinarily wily. Simply put, they undermined the Germans in a variety of ways at all levels.

“En 1940, il n'y avait plus d'hommes. C'étaient des femmes qui ont démarré la Résistance.” 

-Germaine Tillion, quoted in Femmes de la Résistance: 1940-1945, Jean-Paul Lefebvre-Filleau

Recent scholarship has finally brought women Resistants out from the shadows. Women were often slower than men to write about their experiences, but as decades went on, and in some cases archives opened, more of these stories came to light. There is a section in this guide about memoirs, and many are listed below, including those of the well-known Resistants Lucie Aubrac and Marie Madeleine Fourcade. Another valuable source of material are the témoignages — statements made by individuals during interviews conducted immediately after the War. Some such interviews were under the auspices of the Comité d'Historie de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale in Paris. Many of these sources can be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France or the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. As mentioned above, because many women were active in escape lines, some accounts of these women and their activities can be found in reports from those U.S. servicemen, which are available in the National Archives, Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. There are firsthand accounts of downed American airmen who were assisted by Resistants. Many of these accounts talk about being fed, given medical attention and shelter, and even being shepherded to a safehouse. For safety reasons, these women did not usually give their real names, thus they will forever remain anonymous.

As Margaret L. Rossiter notes in her study, Women in the Resistance, some women that have gained attention for their heroic acts managed to preform them while nonchalantly preforming their day jobs. Jeanne Berthomier, who was a civil servant in the Ministry of Public Works in Paris, managed to deliver top-secret information typed on tissue paper to the Alliance chief, Marie Madeleine Fourcade. Mme Paule Letty-Mouroux used her position as a secretary at the Marine de Toulon in order to report the repair status of Axis ships. Mme Marguerite Claeys collected information from agents who posed as customers at the company she owned with her husband— all without his knowledge. Simone Michel Lévy used her job in the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Service (PTT) to obtain intelligence about the Germans that she managed to send to London under the code name of Emma. These women all took enormous risks and many of them were eventually caught and arrested by the German police. Simone herself was captured and deported to Ravensbrück where she continued to sabotage the Germans by organizing work stoppages of her inmates. The Germans sentenced her to death and she was hanged in April of 1945. She was later awarded the Cross of the Liberation and portrayed on a postage stamp that honored Resistants (Women in the Resistance, p.115). Women from a variety of countries, including Britain and the US, served in the French Resistance. Isabel Townsend Pell (photo, left) was an American socialite who joined the French Resistance during World War II — one of the few women who was part of the Maquis — purportedly due to her good aim. Going by a code name of Fredericka, she was commonly known as "the girl with the blond mèche" (mèche de cheveux means lock of hair). She was imprisoned twice during the war, and subsequently decorated with the Legion of Honor for her service. The stories of these women and countless others stand as testaments to the fact that no matter what role you have or where you find yourself, there is often a way to contribute to a larger cause. Although many of these women's names will never be known, their skill and passion contributed to the liberation of France.

Eighty years after their Liberation, France continues to commemorate French Resistance fighters and Allied veterans from WWII. May 27th is known as National Resistance Day in France. It commemorate the first meeting of the National Resistance Council (CNR) which occurred on that date in 1943. On May 27th, 2024, in the presence of the family of Alice Arteil, a secondary school in Le Mayet-de Montagne, was renamed in honor of French Resistant Alice Arteil External. Arteil was one of the only women to command her own Resistance group. Her knowledge of the mountainous and woody terrain was invaluable for the rescue missions and the general activities of the group. Her natural leadership ability and temerity earned her the respect of all whom she worked with, and she was honored with the Croix de Guerre on Sept 30th, 1944 in Lamarche-sur-Saône in the commune of Côte d’Or (Eastern France).

Women Resistants honored in the Panthéon External monument in Paris include: Germaine Tillion, Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Joséphine Baker, and Mélinée Manouchian (along with her famous husband, Missak). Jean Moulin is also buried there. Other women honored in the Panthéon include scientist Marie Curie and Holocaust survivor and feminist activist Simone Veil.

A select bibliography of books about women in the Resistance in both French and English is further down the page. To search for more titles, use the Library's online catalog for books on this topic using the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSHs) below.

World War, 1939-1945--Women--France
World War, 1939-1945--Women--France--Biography
World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--France
World War, 1939-1945--Secret service--France

Notable Female Resistantes

• Berty Albrecht was passionate about family planning and better working conditions for women, and founded the feminist journal Le Problème Sexuel. During the war, she joined with Henri Frenay to develop the movement Combat. Her previous publishing experience helped her spearhead the publication of the clandestine newspaper Combat , named after the movement of the same name. At its height the circulation reached several hundred thousand. She was captured and tortured three times and assumed to have committed suicide.
• Alice Arteil External was one of the only women who commanded her own unit in the Resistance. She was part of the Maquis known as the Franc-Tireurs using the code name "Sylva." She used her expertise in local terrain to assist in the various missions and earned the Croix de Guerre on September 30th, 1944.
• Lucie Aubrac was a founder of the movement Libération-Sud. She wrote an account of her experience in the Resistance called, Outwitting the Gestapo (1993). She is famous for convincing the Germans to release her beloved husband, Raymond, from prison by using her second pregnancy as a pretext for him to be released to marry her (though they were already married). After that he managed to escape.
• Renée Bedarida was a Resistance fighter who worked with the Lyonnais group Témoignage Chrétien (Christian Witness). After the war, she wrote two books about the movement and its leader, Father Pierre Chaillet. 
• Célia Bertin was recruited to help Allied aviators hidden in Occupied Paris because of her ability to speak English. In 1993 she published a study of women during this period, Femmes sous l’Occupation.
• Françoise de Boissieu married her husband early during the Occupation and they focused on working with the movement Combat, founded by Henri Frenay and Berty Albrecht. After the birth of her daughter Muriel, de Boissieu left the baby with her parents and continued to fight with the Resistance.
• Jeanne Chanton was arrested and sent to a work camp in Germany during WWI. She worked with Resistance groups, including Front National Universitaire, but was never arrested.
• Claire Chevrillon, code name Christian Clouet. Chevrillon came from a family of assimilated Jews. After the increasingly harsh laws were imposed on Jewish citizens, she joined the resistance most notably encoding and decoding messages between the Free French in London and de Gaulle's Paris delegation. She spent four months in prison after being betrayed and wrote her memoirs entitled, Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance.
• Marie- Madeleine Fourcade one of the most famous female resistants and the only woman to be made chef de résistance. She led one of the largest resistance networks, Alliance, which supplied more crucial intelligence to British and American Allied forces than any other. She was captured by the Nazis twice and managed to escape both times. She and her husband, a Free French fighter, Hubert Fourcade, helped return General de Gaulle to power in 1958. She published her memoirs, Noah's Ark and was chairwoman of the Resistance Action Committee.
• Annie Kriegel joined a Communist Resistance group at age fifteen because no other groups would admit a member so young.
• Pippa Latour Doyle moved to England from her native South Africa in 1941 to join the war effort. She was recruited into the UK’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) to spy for the Allies in France due to her fluency in French. A “knitting spy,” she hid her information within a knitting kit by knotting codes onto silk. She received the Legion of Honour in 2014.
• Lise Lesèvre welcomed and trained young men who, like her two sons, joined the Maquis. She was brutally tortured by Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon,” after being captured with clandestine documents.
• Danielle Mitterrand the wife of France’s former president, joined the Resistance as a teenager and met her future husband while helping to care for wounded Resistance fighters.
• Madeleine Riffaud was a French journalist and poet, born in Arvillers in 1924. She first began to work for the French Forces of the Interior under codename “Rainer” (reflecting her admiration for poet Rainer Maria Rilke) at just 18 years old. She contributed to the capture of eighty Wehrmacht soldiers from a German supply train, and shot a German officer to death in broad daylight in 1944. She also served as a war correspondent in Algeria and Southeast Asia. After being captured by the Gestapo, Riffaud was transferred to the Fresnes prison where she was tortured and set to be executed, but escaped death via release in a prisoner exchange. She died on November 7, 2024 at the age of 100. A sketch of Madeleine Riffaud by Pablo Picasso External in 1945 was included in a publication of her poems.
• Evelyne Sullerot was on vacation with her family when the Occupation began. They relocated to Compiègne, where she and her younger siblings aided the Resistance. Her father ran a psychiatric clinic that hid Jews and other persecuted individuals.
• Suzanne Vallon fled France after her Resistance activity was discovered and ended up in North Africa on active duty. She also accompanied Allied troops as they went north after being freed from Germany.
• Sonia Vagliano-Eloy joined de Gaulle’s Free French and trained in London. After D-Day, she was sent to France with her female colleagues to oversee refugee camps. She worked with the survivors of Buchenwald.