Thaïs Lacoste-Frémont

Thaïs Lacoste-Frémont (October 18, 1886 – May 6, 1963) was an advocate for women's rights in Quebec.

Early life Lacoste-Frémont came from an eminent family. Her father, Sir Alexandre Lacoste, became a Senator and her mother Marie-Louise Globensky, was a noted philanthropist. Among her seven sisters were the noted feminist Marie Lacoste Gérin-Lajoie, the humanitarian Justine Lacoste-Beaubien and the businesswoman Berthe Dansereau. She married Charles Frémont, a lawyer, in 1910.

Public life Lacoste-Frémont was active in the Conservative Party. She founded and served as the first president of the Quebec Conservative Women's Association . Chaired by judge Charles-Édouard Dorion, the commission was tasked with examination and reform of the Civil Code of Quebec as it pertained to the rights of women. At the time, the law of Quebec was notably regressive as compared to that of other provinces, and a major goal of women's rights activists in Quebec was to liberalize the legal regime. The Commission ultimately made rather modest proposals for reform, of which few were adopted. One reform that was taken up, however, gave married women legal ownership of salaries they earned.

Her 1947 lecture series "The rights of the married woman in the civil and political life of the province of Québec" was highly influential. Some of Lacoste-Frémont's proposals in "Les droits" informed Marie-Claire Kirkland's Bill 16, which, in 1964, made substantial changes to Civil Code provisions regarding women's rights.