The civil law is especially unfavorable to women in France, and in all those countries--mostly Romanic countries--that are strongly influenced by the French “code civil,” or where it has been adopted in full, with some modifications. This is the case in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russian Poland, the Netherlands, and in most of the cantons of Switzerland. There is a saying by Napoleon I. that is characteristic of his conception of the position of women, and that still holds true; it is: “One thing is not French, a woman who may do as she pleases.”[174] As soon as a French woman marries she is placed under the guardianship of her husband. According to the Code Civil, she may not appear in court without the consent of her husband, not even if she is connected with a lawsuit. The husband shall protect his wife, and the wife shall obey her husband. He controls the property brought into marriage by his wife; he may sell, rent, or mortgage same, without being obliged to ask her consent. The result is, that women frequently live in a condition of absolute servitude. A man may spend his wife’s earnings on drink, or on frivolous women; he may gamble and run into debt, leaving his wife and children in want; he is even entitled to demand from an employer the wages his wife has earned. Under such circumstances it is not to be wondered at that many women prefer to desist from marriage, as was frequently seen in France.
In most Romanic countries women cannot act as witnesses to legal documents, contracts, wills, etc. In France this was the case until 1897. But they are permitted--by a strange inconsistency--to act as witnesses at court in all criminal cases, where their testimony may perhaps lead to the execution of a human being. ~In criminal law woman is everywhere regarded as man’s equal, and crimes and transgressions committed by her are measured by the same standard as those committed by man.~ Our law-makers seem blissfully unconscious of this glaring inconsistency. As a widow, a woman may make her will, but in a great many states she is not admitted as a witness to a will, yet she may be appointed as executrix. In Italy women are admitted as witnesses in civil law since 1877.