Olympe de Gouges (7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793) was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.
She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, Olympe de Gouges became increasingly politically engaged. She became an outspoken advocate for improving the condition of slaves in the colonies of 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. As an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men, she wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in 1791. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her close relation with the Girondists.
