In both the legal and the political fields the French women have hitherto (in spite of the Republic) achieved very little. In educational matters, however, the republican government has decidedly favored the women. Here the wishes of the women harmonized with the republican hatred for the priests. What was done perhaps not for the women, was done to spite the Church. Elementary education has been obligatory since 1882. In 1904-1905 there were 2,715,452 girls in the elementary schools, and 2,726,944 boys. State high schools, or _lycées_, for girls have existed since 1880. The programme of these schools is not that of the German _Gymnasiums_, but that of a German high school for girls (foreign languages, however, are elective). In the last two years (in which the ages of the girls are 16 to 18 years) the curriculum is that of a seminary for women teachers. In 1904-1905 these institutions were attended by 22,000 girls, as compared with 100,000 boys. The French woman's rights movement has as yet not succeeded in establishing _Gymnasiums_ for girls; at present, efforts are being made to introduce _Gymnasium_ courses in the girls' _lycées_. The admission of girls to the boys' _lycées_, which has occurred in Germany and in Italy, has not even been suggested in France. To the present, the preparation of girls for the universities has been carried on privately. The right to study in the universities has never been withheld from women. From the beginning, women could take the _Abiturientenexamen_ (the university entrance examinations) with the young men before an examination commission. All departments are open to women. The number of women university students in France is 3609; the male students number 38,288. Women school teachers control the whole public school system for girls. In the French schools for girls most of the teachers are women; the superintendents are also women. The ecclesiastical educational system,--which still exists in secular guise,--is naturally, so far as the education of girls is concerned, entirely in the hands of women. The salaries of the secular women teachers in the first three classes of the elementary schools are equal to those of the men. The women teachers in the _lycées_ (_agrégées_) are trained in the Seminary of Sèvres and in the universities. Their salaries are lower than those of the men. In 1907 the first woman teacher in the French higher institutions of learning was appointed,--Madame Curie, who holds the chair of physics in the Sorbonne, in Paris. In the provincial universities women are lecturers on modern languages. There are no women preachers in France. _Dr. jur._ Jeanne Chauvin was the first woman lawyer, being admitted to the bar in 1899. To-day women lawyers are practicing in Paris and in Toulouse.