Hubertine Auclert

In 1880, Hubertine Auclert refused to pay her taxes and, in fact, launched a tax revolt in France based on the idea that women shouldn’t have to pay to support a government they aren’t allowed to help elect. She claimed that it was a matter of “taxation without representation,” which had fueled the revolution against the British and created the United States one hundred years before. Nearly thirty years after she kicked off her tax revolt, Auclert, still an in-your-face woman, smashed a ballet box in Paris and defiantly presented herself as a candidate for the General Assembly -- still thirty-seven years before women in France would be allowed to vote!