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While a long tradition of religious history has focused on female missionary activities, what traces of this perspective can be found in recent historiography on global France ? This article draws on research on the civilizing mission in imperial history, the history of women and gender, and the history of education to suggest avenues of research that render visible the gendered dynamics of what has been termed “Franco-globalization”. An initial section reviews the existence of works on the subject, especially in English. A second more empirical section analyzes the role of Jewish women teachers in the activities of the Alliance universelle israélite, which was founded in Paris in 1860. Working for the “regeneration” of Jewish women in North Africa and the Middle East, the Alliance’s female teachers sought to change the place of women – through schools and work experiences – in the societies where they settled. The final part of the article takes a closer look at some of the trajectories of these particularly mobile women teachers, raising the question of the nature of the civilizational feminism they appear to embody.