The French Civil Code, Women and Inheritance in Southern France

The Napoleonic Civil Code adopted in 1804 dramatically changed rules of inheritance in France. It was in favour of egalitarian sharing and then framed and limited possibilities of favoring one child from the others, unlike inegalitarian practices deeply rooted in southern France. For a long time researchers have been interested in consequences of the Civil Code in areas of traditional inegalitarian sharing, in the different stategies organized by populations to bypass new rules, in the new claims which it permitted. They have tried to take in count relationships between eldest and younger siblings because they have been changed by the Civil Code. Its effects on gender relationships, between brothers and sisters, have been less studied. Old inegalitarian system allowed parents to advantage one boy in many southern regions. But the Civil Code créâtes new rules including principle of equality between men and women and does not allow exclusion of endowed girls from inheritance anymore. The aim of this paper is to measure effects of implementation of the Civil Code on women's access to inheritance, and therefore to land property in the first half of 19th century in the Toulouse region. Did the sisters take advantage on their brothers of this legislative change ? For this study, notarial records and land registries cadastres will be used . These two types of sources are useful in the southern regions of France before and after the French Revolution, so comparaison over time is possible.L'objectif de cette communication est de mesurer les effets du Code civil sur l'accès des femmes à l'héritage, et par conséquent sur la propriété de la terre dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle dans la région de Toulouse. Les soeurs ont-elles retiré des avantages par rapport à leurs frères de ce changement législatif ? Pour cette étude seront mobilisés registres notariaux cadastraux. Ces deux types de sources sont utilisés dans les régions du midi de la France avant et après la Révolution française, ce qui permet la comparaison dans le temps