Harrison has argued that nineteenth-century French government administrators generally ignored the activities of women's associations, and most historians agree that female groups appear to have garnered little notice from authorities. While Grange suggests that this may be because so few female associations existed throughout much of the nineteenth century, Duprat has uncovered numerous female societies, especially societies de bienfaisance (charitable societies), many of which received more generous treatment from municipal and national officials than their male counterparts. However, she suggests that their official "silence"--the absence of general assemblies and of frequent publications, as well as their careful cultivation of the traditional. Nonthreatening image of dames de charlle (charitable women)--kept these associations largely out of public view.