Christine de Pizan

“Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did.”

Imagine a setting in a seminar room, where students are attending a course on the designated “classics” of international law, international legal history or schools of thought in international law. They listen to different presentations and engage in discussions on outstanding figures, be it philosophers, scholars, judges or lawyers, and their important contributions to the development of the international legal order. When looking at the so-called “fathers of international law” and other icons of the field, particularly from the (earlier) past, some will not notice anything unusual. By contrast, others may experience a disturbing feeling, as if the picture remains patchy and incomplete. They realize that all of these figures were possibly identifying themselves as men, predominantly white heterosexual men. And all of a sudden, the question arises: Where are actually the women ¹⁾ in this picture?

In conversations on missing female voices in the traditional development of international law a repetitive argument given as an explanation for the absence of women as active designers and contributors to international law is that it was simply unusual to find women in certain professions at that time due to the assignment of gender roles and corresponding conduct and activities considered as adequate. There is certainly a great deal of truth in this explanation. Due to the societal roles given and characteristics attributed to women and the corresponding restrictions with regard to access to education, professions, financial resources, land, property and therefore a self-determined life, women simply lacked the capacities, the means and the opportunities to establish themselves as leading philosophers, academics or practitioners.²⁾ To acknowledge the effects of systematic and structural discrimination of women in all their diversity means to visualize the significant hurdles women faced and still face to shape and develop public international law and other legal fields and to pave the way for necessary changes, though it is important to highlight that such discrimination manifested and manifests itself differently depending on the intersectional situation of the specific woman.³⁾ In this sense, the limited space for recognition of outstanding women was mostly occupied by white, Western, middle- to upper-class women.⁴⁾

Nevertheless, the argument that the absence of women was a normal side effect of the traditional social circumstances at that time could also serve as an excuse to overlook, ignore and make women invisible, who have actually played a crucial role as active designers of the international legal order – decades and even centuries ago. Thereby, those trailblazing female figures who actually succeeded in significantly contributing to the development of international law despite the abovementioned hurdles women faced at that time, are denied the recognition they deserve,⁵⁾ which is also owed to a patriarchal system that operates covertly and therefore mostly unnoticed. In this vein, Mary Beckeremphasized that “patriarchy as a social system within which rules operate – a social system that is male-centered, male-identified, male-dominated, and obsessed with power over and control of others – remains entirely invisible. Patriarchy can be challenged, but only by those who see it.”⁶⁾

Important academic projects, such as the works of Immi Talgreen⁷⁾ and Rebecca Adami and Dan Plesch,⁸⁾ and other individual contributions have brought several of the many trailblazing women and their contributions to international law out of the shadow of their male colleagues, thereby actively confronting the patriarchal patterns that foster their invisibility and non-recognition. This blogpost seeks to add to these important works by kicking off a new column with the Verfassungsblog on Outstanding Women of International, European and Constitutional Law to make very diverse female actors, their contributions as scholars, activists, judges, lawyers, philosophers and in other roles to these fields as well as their intersectional experiences more visible, known and recognized.

Standing out in the Medieval: Multitalented Author and Feminist Icon Christine de Pizan

One of the women that have for the longest time been overlooked and undervalued in legal scholarship,⁹⁾and who possibly fell victim to the idea that women, particularly through the medieval era, simply lacked the means, capacities and opportunities to make a significant contribution to the development of public international law, is Christine de Pizan. In recent years, multi-talented Pizan has caught more attention, particularly through the portrayals of her work on the law of war by Franck Latty, who highlighted the significance of her work for the legal discipline (see here and here), following Ernest Nys and others in acknowledging her oeuvre. Pizan as an outstanding intellect was a living proof that even during the Middle Ages women were able to lead extraordinary lives that very much departed from paradigms existent at that time, which were ruling and pervading the entire society.¹⁰⁾

In the Middle Ages, the position of women in its connection to autonomy, quality of life and opportunities as well as corresponding societal restrictions were very much dependent on the specific time – the situation of women was changing, but in principle improving from the early to the late middle ages – and the class (clergy, nobility and serfs) they belonged to. Nonetheless, the position of women and how it was articulated was predominantly influenced by the church and the aristocracy, sustained by a feudal system that maintained every person in his*her position.¹¹⁾ Officially women counted as second-class citizens and were generally subjected to male control over their bodies, behavior and interests during the Medieval time. In this sense, “[t]he fact that governed her position was not her personality but her sex, and by her sex she was inferior to man.”¹²⁾ Therefore, a woman was in principle relegated to the home and the field to produce children and assist her husband in his work. Eileen Power therefore highlighted that “the great majority of women lived and died wholly unrecorded as they labored in the field, the farm, and the home.” Not so Christine de Pizan.

The First to live by her Pen: Privileges and Hurdles at the French Court

Pizan was born in the late Middle Ages, in 1364, in the Republic of Venice, Italy. The foundation for much of the opportunities and successes of a young women that would become a virtuous and versatile court writer, author, poet and an early icon of feminist writings were probably laid in her childhood. Her father, Tommasso de Benvenuto da Pizzano, a physician, court astrologer and Councillor of the Venetian Republic, accepted an appointment as astrologer of the French King, Charles V, so that the family moved to Paris in 1368, where Christine spent a studios, but also pleasant childhood with the benefits and access to materials that came with the rich cultural background at the court, which also shows the very privileged environment she grew up in.¹³⁾ Nonetheless, Pizan was early on confronted with the stereotypical assignment of gender roles in the Middle Ages. Looking back at her childhood, Pizan herself noted in her work Le Livre de la cité des dames (“The Book of the City of Ladies”):

Your own father, who was a great astrologer and philosopher, did not believe that knowledge of the sciences reduced a woman’s worth. […] Rather, it was because your mother, as a woman, held the view that you should spend your time spinning like the other