Yvonne Knibiehler

Yvonne Knibiehler, née Azaïs (5 October 1922 - 25 February 2025) was a French academic, essayist, historian and feminist, specializing in the history of women and motherhood.

Biography Yvonne Knibiehler completed her higher education in Montpellier from 1940 to 1944. She obtained the agrégation (award for teaching in history and geography) in 1945, then taught at the girls' high school in Nîmes (later the Feuchères College). She abandoned research, taught in secondary schools, and raised three children. She lived in Morocco from 1949 to 1954 and taught at the boys' high school in Oujda.

In 1962, she began a doctoral thesis at the University of Aix-en-Provence. She defended her doctoral thesis in November 1970 on François-Auguste Mignet. She was an assistant professor and then lecturer in 1970. She became a professor in 1972 at Aix-Marseille University. She retired from teaching in 1984, after specializing in the history of women, family, and health.

She is the author of A History of Mothers and Motherhood in the West, a work ranked among "the 25 feminist books you must have read" by the Swiss daily Le Temps.

She died in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) on February 25, 2025, at the age of 102.