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An exception in the world of science in the nineteenth century, the Le Play school, named after its founder, the inventor of a social science, was open to women. Among the members who joined the Société d’économie sociale or the Unions de la paix sociale, we can distinguish two main categories: those who already had an important role in society and found in social science a support they could use; and those for whom it was a means of asserting their interest and competence in an area of knowledge where women were absent. Their contribution consisted less of a theoretical contribution to social science than of its diffusion in society and its practical application.