France, Nov. 23 -- One hundred years ago this month, women working in fish canning factories on France's north-west coast held a strike that has gone down in history as one of the earliest examples of women successfully mobilising to demand working rights.

Hugging a bay in Finistere, where northern France juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, the port of Douarnenez doesn't look like an obvious hotbed of industrial revolt, with its picturesque pastel-coloured houses lining the harbour.But the town's narrow alleyways were once the scene of a movement thatopened a new chapter in women's working rights.

A hundred years ago, Douarnenez was a town in flux. Fishing had been its lifeblood for centuries, but with the invention of canning, suddenly i...