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(Marie Désirée) Pauline Roland (* 7. Juni 1805, Falaise, Normandie; † 16 Dezember 1852 Frankreich) war eine französische Journalistin, Feministin und Sozialistin.

Aufgrund des Wunsches ihrer Mutter, verwitwete Postmeisterin, erhält Pauline Roland und ihre zwei Jahre jüngere Schwester Irma eine gute Schulbildung, was für Mädchen der damaligen Zeit nicht üblich war. In ihrem Geburtsort Falais gab es kein Mädchengymnasium, daher schickte die Mutter die Schwestern zur Schulbildung in ein Pensionat. Mit Anfang zwanzig erhielten sie Privatunterricht von Lehrer M. Desprez, der den Roland Schwestern die Ideen des französischen Sozialismus von Claude Henri de Rouvroy und Comte de Saint-Simon vermittelte, bei dem die Befreiung der Frau eine großen Platz einnahm. Pauline Roland wurde eine enthusiastische Unterstützerin dieser Philosophie und ein aktives Mitglied der Saint-Simonisten.

1832 ging sie nach Paris, verdiente ihren Unterhalt durch schriftstellerische und recherchierende Tätigkeiten. Sie schrieb an Lexika mit und begann auch für frühe feministische Zeitschriften zu schreiben.

Roland was a close associate of Pierre Leroux and George Sand and she joined Leroux's community at Boussac (Indre) in 1847, where she worked in the school and wrote for l'Eclaireur de l'Indre. Roland lived for twelve years until 1845 in a "free union" with Jean Aicard, insisting that their two children, and a son whose father was Adolphe Guérolt, bear her name and be brought up by her. On Flora Tristan's death in 1844, she also undertook the care of her daughter Aline (later to be the mother of Paul Gauguin).

On Roland's return to Paris in December, she became active in feminist and socialist agitation and publications (the Voix des Femmes), notably with Jeanne Deroin and Desirée Gay. With Deroin and Gustave Lefrançais she established the Association of Socialist Teachers stressing the importance of equality of the sexes in an education program spanning the first eighteen years of life and of women staying in the work force. Roland then played a key role in convening the Union of Workers Associations.

In October 1849 delegates of over 100 trades elected Roland to the central committee. This attempt to resuscitate the cooperative movement in 1848 was suppressed by the government in April 1850, and Roland was one of fifty people arrested the following month. At her subsequent trial for her socialism, feminism and "debauchery," she was attacked vitriolically and then imprisoned for seven months, until July 1851. Undaunted, Roland was active in the Parisian resistance to the coup d'état of December and subsequently imprisoned in Algeria. She owed her early release to the intercession of Pierre-Jean de Béranger and George Sand however, on the way home to rejoin her children, she became ill owing to the harsh conditions she had endured in prison and died in Lyon on 15 December 1852.

Literatur
Groult, Benoît: "Wie die Freiheit zu den Frauen kam. Das Leben der Pauline Roland." Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf., München, 1992