Between the 1960s and 1970s, La Réunion, a French overseas territory in the Indian Ocean, was the site of a shocking reproductive control campaign institutionalized by French authorities. By claiming the necessity to contain the island’s overpopulation, local and national officials encouraged doctors to perform forced sterilizations, coerced abortions, and state officials to remove children from their families to repopulate French departments.[1] These policies primarily targeted the island’s poor Creole population, with officials affirming that reducing birth rates would help alleviate poverty and further the development of la Réunion. Moreover, reports and testimonies later revealed that these measures were part of a broader, systemic attempt to control and "modernize" the population.[2]
The case of La Réunion occurred at a time when French feminists in metropolitan France were actively advocating for abortion rights.[3] Consequently, this case highlights a significant gap between French feminists’ agendas and the realities faced by non-white women in French overseas territories. Scholars have since criticized the exclusionary tendencies of French feminist movements, particularly their disregard for non-white women’s experiences.[4] Examining the situation in La Réunion helps us understand how French feminists’ universalism historically privileged white women while marginalizing others, revealing deeper structural inequalities within these movements.
Colonial history of La Réunion: from a plantation to an “overpopulated” French department
Policies aiming at controlling reproduction developed significantly around the 17th and 18th centuries, coinciding with the expansion of colonial empires and nationalist projects. These policies constitute organized state interventions to regulate birth rates within a specific territory. Scholars argue that these practices are often influenced by specific economic, political, or cultural factors, which is why states started to perceive birth rate control as a means to achieve broader national or financial goals.[5] Françoise Vergès in “The Wombs of Women: Capitalism, Racialization, Feminism” studies contemporary control of reproduction by exploring the case of La Réunion. She recounts that, unlike other plantation colonies, France’s colonial management of its overseas plantation islands, focused primarily on importing slaves from other colonized territories to work on the plantations. For example, in La Réunion, which was populated to support the French plantation economy, the state mostly imported slaves from India to repopulate the island. In this way, population growth was not based on reproduction but on the importation of new slaves, as living conditions on the islands at the time were extremely precarious and death rates very high.[6]
The population began to grow only after World War II with biological reproduction rates increasing despite the ongoing poor living conditions. In 1946, La Réunion, along with other overseas territories like Martinique and Guadeloupe, officially became French departments. In La Réunion, this transition was supported by two political parties. During the political negotiation, integration into the French Republic represented a promise of equality and better living conditions for supporters of the integration. However, associated costs, such as infrastructure, healthcare and widespread poverty posed significant challenges to French authorities. Additionally, in the 1950s, concerns regarding the “overpopulation” in La Réunion and other French overseas territories became a dominant theme in discussions surrounding these regions. Similarly, beliefs that women in the "Third World" had too many children, hindering development and the elimination of poverty, prevailed in international discourses during this period. As a result, narratives surrounding La Réunion increasingly framed “overpopulation” as the primary obstacle to the island’s development.[7]
Consequently, Vergès argues that discourses surrounding the “overpopulation” of La Réunion were used to justify the implementation of birth control as a political and economic tool. This strategy aimed at reducing the financial burden required to diminish poverty on the island. Furthermore, media stigmatization supported these public policies, framing Reunionese culture as less advanced, reinforcing the underlying idea that the local population could not develop independently and needed external interventions. As a result, French authorities encouraged abortions, and birth control, while these same practices were prohibited on the mainland.[8]
Historical roots of white French feminists’ blindness to the Réunionese case
Additionally, this story reveals a clear contradiction between white French feminists’ priorities and non-white French women. French Feminist resistance to legalize abortion rights started in the 1970s, with abortion considered “an essential tool to overcome patriarchy.”[9] This combat was marked by a focus on ensuring access to abortion for women across all social classes, not just for the elite.[10] The core vision of the French feminist movement at the time centered on the universal condition of all women facing patriarchal oppressions, thereby aligning with a universalist conception of feminism. Abortion rights were legalized in 1975, marking a significant victory for the movement.[11]
According to Vergès, French feminists’ campaigns for abortion rights, combined with their lack of consideration for coerced sterilizations in La Réunion, both illustrate the marginalizing tendencies of French feminists towards non-white women. Evidencing that, even if French feminist resistance focused on class perspective, racial and postcolonial dynamics were still ignored. For instance, on April 5, 1971, the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF) published a manifesto in Le Nouvel Observateur, signed by 343 French women declaring "I had an abortion." This public declaration was important because, at the time, abortion was illegal in France, and the signatories were risking legal consequences. The article also drew a parallel between women's bodily autonomy and the historical situations of slaves, who had no control over their bodies.[12] Meanwhile, three weeks earlier the same journal had published an article exposing the stories of thirty Réunionese women, whose testimonies revealed systematic practices of coerced sterilization on the island.[13] This example reflects not only the distinct experiences of Réunionese women with reproduction policies, but also a lack of understanding from French feminists for their unique situation. This is further illustrated by the misguided comparison made by French feminists between illegal abortion, which restricts women’s bodily autonomy and slavery, revealing the ignorance of their white privilege and complicity during colonization.
More interestingly, Vergès identified a shift in contemporary French national identity that explains why this event was generally ignored by feminist movements. Vergès refers to this change as France’s “postcolonial republicanism,” an identity shift following Algeria’s independence in 1962, characterized by the reimagination of France’s national identity as a “decolonial state.” [14] Presenting decolonization as a definitive break reinforced the perception of France as an inherently European and “white” country, which represented the necessary step to uphold its republican and universalist values.[15] This shift was followed by incentives from French authorities to modernize France’s former colonies in the name of “development,” further reinforcing this identity change. In other words, France’s neocolonial policies on La Réunion were disguised under terms such as “modernity” and “development,” reinforcing the nation’s new “decolonial” identity while concealing the underlying neocolonial nature of these policies.
According to Vergès, French feminists’ universalism, which assumes that all women likely share similar experiences with patriarchy, prevented them from truly acknowledging the scandal that occurred in La Réunion.[16] As a result, the reinforcement of universal republican values influenced French feminists by spreading white universalist beliefs within the movement, further deepening the gap between French feminists and non-white French women.
French feminist whiteness and the need for intersectional feminism
As outlined by Lépinard, feminist whiteness defines practices and discourses that favor French white feminists’ universalist narratives, positioning non-white women as “others” while securing privileges within the movement. In short, white is seen as “unmarked by race,” serving as a universal reference point in discussions surrounding women’s rights or human rights, thereby reinforcing white people’s ignorance of racism.[17] For instance, Lépinard’s study, which interviewed French feminist groups between 2011 and 2015, exposes tendencies to locate racism outside the nation, and to patronize racialized women. Some interviews reveal that Muslim and veiled women were usually associated with a foreign context outside of France. This explains why some interviewees failed to recognize their privileges and racist biases, further evidencing the whiteness in French feminists’ discourses and practices.[18] Furthermore, during the political campaign for “gender parity” in 2013, Lépinard also documented resistance from French feminists to include racialized women in their advocacy. During the campaign, several feminist groups voiced concerns about the inclusion of ethnicity quotas within the “gender parity” policy, fearing it might create divisions and undermine a strong coalition supporting the policy.[19] However, the story of the women in La Reunion reveals that refusing to acknowledge France’s ethnic diversity prevents feminist movements from effectively resisting other forms of institutional discrimination and inequalities perpetuated by the state.
To bridge the gap between white French feminists and racialized French women, the concept of intersectionality is essential. Nowadays, intersectionality is widely used across various academic and institutional fields. It promotes a perspective that considers identities as overlapping and imbricated, allowing one to grasp all the contextual and historical elements shaping one’s identity. Muñoz-Puig’s concept of the “intersectional wound” offers a compelling example of intersectional practices. It highlights practices and discourses that encourage recognizing our own privileges and positionality through empathy particularly within feminist movements. For instance, acknowledging the fact that women’s identities are multiple, and not monolithic, allows for the understanding of less privileged women’s experiences.[20] Furthermore, Vergès argues that adopting a decolonial feminist approach is crucial for addressing systems of oppression in their entirety. She encourages French feminists to recognize France’s colonial heritage and the privileges that white French women, in particular, hold as a result. As, it carries the potential to form a broader coalition that includes every French woman, rather than just a single privileged minority.[21]
The need for a coalition is even more crucial given the current global rollback of sexual and reproductive health and rights.[22] Moreover, control of reproduction is still administered invariably between French overseas territories and the mainland. For instance, in 2023 during a press conference, the French president introduced new policies to prevent the decline of birth rates in mainland France referring to the implementation of a “plan de réarmement démographique,” a demographic rearming plan. At the same time, reports indicate that some hospitals in Mayotte, a French overseas territory, are currently incentivizing Mahoran women to undergo sterilization.[23] These iterations of the past are symptomatic of France’s ongoing neocolonial policies, which favor specific citizenship, by controlling women’s bodies. Understanding this will be instrumental in the coming years, to face the global rollback of reproductive rights and form broader intersectional coalitions, capable of effectively addressing systems of oppression as a whole.