• by Fern Siegel , March 8, 2024

Le Chocolat des Français knows women have often been erased from history.

And it’s exacted a sweet revenge.

To mark International Women's Day on March 8, in collaboration with its agency TBWA\Paris, the chocolatier has created four chocolate blocks designed to highlight pioneering women who left their mark on French history.

Each block highlights a woman who pioneered in her field, accompanied by a snapcode. Scan with Snapchat and the illustrations come to life. The interactive experience features four exceptional women.

They are: Alice Guy, a film director, screenwriter and producer, who directed the first fiction film in movie history; Marthe Gauthier, physician and pediatrician, who discovered the chromosomal anomaly responsible for Down's syndrome; Olympe de Gouges, an 18th-century playwright and political activist who campaigned for gender equality to be enshrined in the French Constitution; and Sophie Germain, a mathematician who worked on the elasticity of metals, and without whose work the Eiffel Tower would not exist.

The campaign will be broadcast from March 8 onward, while the chocolate blocks are available exclusively on the Chocolat des Français site and in stores.

For every block sold, €1 ($1.09) will be donated to the Dans le Genre égales charity, which promotes gender equality. People are also invited to suggest new names online of forgotten pioneers to expand the collection.