Elisabeth Badinter

Élisabeth Badinter was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris. Her parents were Sophie Vaillant and her husband Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, the founder of Publicis, the first major advertising firm in France. She became an ardent feminist in her teens, after reading Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex). She received her secondary education from L'école alsacienne, a private school in Paris, and then pursued studies in philosophy at the Sorbonne. She became a specialist in French history in the Age of Enlightenment. At 21, she married Robert Badinter, a prominent lawyer, professor, and politician, with whom she had three children between 1966 and 1970. In 1973, after receiving a doctorate, she completed her agrégation (state teaching exam) in philosophy and began teaching at the elite École Polytechnique for 28 years. In 1980, she published her first book, L'Amour en plus: Histoire de l’amour maternel (The Myth of Motherhood), a history of maternal love from the 17th through the 19th centuries, and famously questioned whether maternal love was a natural instinct in women. She has since written two dozen more books and treatises about women's participation in the Enlightenment, gender issues, women's rights, and the family in France. In addition to her roles as a scholar and public intellectual, she has also assumed responsibilities as an heir to her father’s business. She is the major stockholder of Publicis Groupe, now the fourth largest communications firm in the world. She served as chair of the supervisory board from 1996 to 2017, and then vice-chair.