Women of a Certain Age

Abstract Auclair and radio personality Menie Grégoire in 1967 co-edited a two-volume collection of essays titled Femmes (Women). Chapters by leading national and international figures, including Ségal, explored a wide range of topics about women’s lives around the world. Then the May 1968 student uprising shook France. Ségal offered to retire, fearing she had nothing to say to the younger generation. Elle’s director refused her resignation and Ségal’s column continued another twenty years. Auclair returned to visit Chile with her grandson. Auclair and Ségal both wrote about aging. Auclair added to her series a book about happiness in old age. Ségal published a book about her full, successful life as a single woman. Weekly, monthly, in women’s magazines, books, and on television, Auclair and Ségal worked to empower women, building, on the personal level, bridges to feminism.