The stereotype of the Parisian woman is impossible to escape. She’s there selling you lipstick and expensive skincare, skinny jeans and ballet flats. She’s on your screens in Emily in Paris. Her face was the logo of the 2024 Olympics. She is thin, she is white, she is heterosexual, she is able-bodied and her hair is always perfectly tousled.
She is also a myth. Paris is as diverse as the who live there, and beyond the clichés of French womanhood is a city that is a cradle of feminist activism and vibrant women-owned businesses.
I first moved to Paris 10 years ago, and over the past decade, I have discovered a whole new side of my adopted city that you won’t find in guidebooks or on Instagram. Here’s a guide to the city from an intersectional feminist perspective.
Discover
The best way to get to know a city is to join a guided tour. But if you really want to understand Paris beyond its hundreds of monuments to men, you’ll need a feminist guide.
Franco-American journalist Lindsey Tramuta is the author of The New Parisienne: The Women & Ideas Shaping Paris, a book that celebrates French women beyond the stereotypes. She also gives regular tours of dining destinations loved by Paris locals. Sign up for one of her specialised tours here.
Another great option is Entrée to Black Paris – which leads tours covering the “best of black Paris history, culture, and contemporary life” in the French capital. You can book a specifically woman-centric tour of the spectacular Luxembourg Gardens, or learn about the Parisian life of Josephine Baker, the entertainer-turned-resistance fighter.
Eat
All that walking will build a fearsome appetite, and there is no better place to sate it than the gourmet capital of the world. But forget the cliché of the mustachioed male chef in a stiff hat and apron churning out the same old classics. The new vanguard of French cuisine is being led by women.
At the recently Michelin-starred Datil, Manon Fleury has dispensed with the traditional top-down system of the classic French kitchen and instead runs a non-hierarchical, women-majority kitchen where the work is shared equally between chefs. The menu at Datil emphasises reducing food waste and celebrating local, seasonal ingredients.
The best cookies in all of France are made by Moko Hirayama at Mokonuts, a restaurant Moko runs with her husband, Omar Koreitem. The restaurant is only open for lunch, which allows the couple to spend evenings with their daughters — it’s the kind of policy that is pushing the French restaurant scene towards more family-friendly attitudes. (If you can’t make it to Paris to try Hirayama’s exquisite cookies, you can attempt to recreate the magic at home thanks to this recipe in The New York Times).
Drink
If the weight of the patriarchy leaves you needing a drink, there is a plethora of feminist watering holes to choose from.
Get off the tourist track entirely at the queer feminist cocktail bar Montvenus in Montreuil, a vibrant suburb in the east of the city. The bar, co-founded by Hélène Carreira et Andréa Bellemere-Laussat, regularly hosts meet-ups for the LGBTQIA+ community and supports queer creators.
Whichever corner of the city you are in, there will be a Rosa Bonheur franchise nearby. Named after the pioneering 19th-century artist who flouted gender conventions by living with female partners and insisting on wearing trousers, these women-founded guinguettes (essentially the French version of a beer garden) are inclusive, queer-friendly spaces to eat, drink and dance in the parks of Paris or even in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the Seine.
Shop
You don’t have to give your money to the mega-giants of luxury fashion when you come to the French capital. Ignore an industry that promotes only one type of beauty, and support these feminist-run boutiques instead.
Make My Lemonade is a size-inclusive brand founded by Lisa Gachet in 2015. Focusing on colour and fun and located on the buzzing Canal St Martin, all of the brand’s clothing is ethically made in Europe.
The Patronne pop-up shop in the 11th arrondissement is a space where feminist creators can showcase their works. The shop is attached to a feminist coworking space for women-led businesses.
Art
Not only are the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay overrun with tourists in summer, their collections are also dominated by male artists. Beat the crowds and enjoy these staunchly feminist temporary exhibitions instead.
The Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the first women ever to join the Academy of Art and Design, and one of the few who was able to make a living from art during her own lifetime. She was also tortured during trial to prove she was telling the truth about fellow painter Agostino Tassi having raped her. Her subsequent paintings are suffused with feminine rage and deep empathy for the female victims of history. The exquisite Musée de Jacquemart-André is showing a retrospective of her works this summer.
“I tried to be a joyful feminist,” French filmmaker Agnes Varda says in a meme that regularly goes viral, “but I was very angry.” And who can’t relate to that? A new exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet celebrates the trailblazing feminist director and her relationship to the city she called home.
Megan Clement is a feminist journalist who lives in Paris. Her memoir about life in France and Australia, Desire Paths, is out now.
