Journée Internationale Des Droits Des Femmes: Two voices, one day—Pierrette’s underground fight and Charlène’s public call
journée internationale des droits des femmes is being marked this Sunday, March 8, 2026, with sharply different but tightly connected messages from Saint-Nazaire and Monaco. In Saint-Nazaire, 88-year-old Pierrette Grisard—an engineer by training—recounted a life built around fighting for women’s rights, including helping dozens of women obtain abortions when it was illegal. In Monaco, the Prince’s Palace issued an official statement in which Princess Charlène declared that equality is not a favor but a right that must be exercised fully, everywhere, and for all.
Saint-Nazaire: Pierrette Grisard recounts the risks she took in the 1960s
In Saint-Nazaire, Pierrette Grisard received visitors in her small two-room apartment in a Domytis senior residence, surrounded by her cat, paintings she makes, books, and personal memories. Born in Angers 88 years ago, she describes coming from a bourgeois environment leaning left, while also recalling a formative family conflict: her father refused to let her mother return to work as a secretary—something Grisard frames as a lasting wound for her mother and a driving force for her own determination.
Grisard says she excelled in mathematics and passed the entrance exam for what she describes as the only engineering school open to women at the time. She sums up the effect bluntly: “Because I did studies that were not accepted by men, I became, in fact, a fighter. ”
Her militancy, she explains, began within the Planning familial in the 1960s, notably in Angers where she lived with her husband and children. She describes those years as a period when abortion was prohibited and contraception was almost nonexistent. She recalls the difficulty of accessing contraception, including diaphragms that had to be imported from England.
On abortion, Grisard is direct about the danger, saying it was punishable at the assizes. She describes helping women who could do so travel to England, and later deciding—alongside young medical interns—to act for those who could not. She also recounts the effort to obtain equipment, describing a family trip to England where they returned with what was needed hidden in a camper van, coupled with a constant fear of surveillance, and an insistence that stopping was never an option.
Journée Internationale Des Droits Des Femmes: Monaco Palace statement puts equality front and center
In Monaco, the Principality marked the day with an official declaration released by the Prince’s Palace in the name of Princess Charlène. The statement, issued on Sunday, March 8, 2026 (ET), carried unusually direct language for a formal message, asserting that women’s power does not need to be created but freed, and underscoring a core line: equality is not a favor—it is a right that must be exercised fully, everywhere, and for all.
The message also expressed a forward-looking wish: that every little girl can dream without barriers and act without fear. The statement prompted immediate online reaction, with many supporters praising the tone and modernity of the declaration.
The Palace message also referenced Charlène’s personal trajectory before becoming Princess, describing her as a former champion who grew up in Benoni near Johannesburg, South Africa, and highlighting that at age 18, in 1996, she won South African swimming championships—an experience portrayed as shaping the discipline she now brings to humanitarian commitments.
Reactions and what comes next
Grisard, now 88 and after a divorce and several moves, says she has not lost her determination. She warns against complacency and outlines priorities she still sees as urgent: educating boys and girls the same way, continuing to fight for pay equality, and staying alert because hard-won gains can be threatened depending on who comes to power. Her message lands with particular force on journée internationale des droits des femmes, tying past clandestine risks to present-day vigilance.
In the hours ahead on March 8, 2026 (ET), attention will remain on how these words travel—through personal testimony in Saint-Nazaire and institutional messaging from Monaco—each pressing the same point from different angles: rights are defended through action, and the next chapter depends on how firmly societies choose to hold the line.
