 What Condorcet termed, in a 1790 essay by that name, “the admission of women to the rights of citizenship” was widely opposed on the grounds that women possessed distinctive natures, which perfectly suited them to the fulfillment of their domestic  duties.[4]  Women were deemed unqualified for the realm of public affairs because of their alleged greater susceptibility to sensations, flawed rationality, and weaker sense of justice. Women did not get the vote during the French Revolution, but they did benefit from many of the changes that occurred in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and the legal status of unwed mothers and their children. However, they ultimately suffered setbacks as many of these reforms were withdrawn or curtailed during Napoleon’s reign. (On the revolutionary record, see Traer 1980; Landes 1988, 1996; Fraisse 1994; Hunt 1992; Hufton 1999; Scott 1996; Verjus 2002; Desan 2004; Heuer 2005; Beckstrand 2009.) A further consequence of the Revolution is that, for the first time, sex was introduced as a constitutional condition for the possession of political rights, even as rights were proclaimed to be universal and inalienable. In contrast to such hypocrisy, Condorcet affirmed woman’s equal humanity on the grounds of reason and justice. While never entirely dismissing the influential case for women’s difference, Condorcet refused to accept this as an impediment to their equal enjoyment of civil and political rights. He attributed women’s limitations, to the extent they existed, not to their sex but rather to their inferior education and circumstances. Appreciating the risks he faced in rebutting one of the age’s most deeply held prejudices, he begged for the opportunity to engage in reasoned dialogue with his opponents: