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This research examines the modes and foundations of the "subjective revolution" which constitutes second-wave feminisms in France. Our results are based on an investigation carried out in 2006 and 2007 in a mid-sized provincial town, using interviews with "ordinary" women who participated in women's groups in the 1970s, whether closely or from a distance. These women subverted the gendered norms that hindered them in the 1970s, and this paper attempts to bring to light the particular modes of making of feminist "agency." The detailed reconstruction of three contrasting stories of "ordinary" women allows us to analyze how gendered norms have been questioned and de-naturalized, and how this gender consciousness has been connected to class consciousness and translated into liberating discourses and practices. We investigate what plays out from the point of view of gender relations in community institutions (families, marriages, school, etc.), which are still marked by patriarchy, at the time of broader awareness of a pro-active and subversive women's liberation movement and of the vote of key laws for the emancipation of the "second sex". This shift, from the Parisian movement to the variety of individual experiences, enables us to spot at grass roots level the key events that marked out primary socialization and social trajectories, but also the women who spread these ideas locally, their tactics, and the driving forces for circulation of feminist ideas by close-knit networks.