and the Commune The Role of Women Faced with the spontaneous insurrection of the Paris proletariat on March 18th 1871 the bourgeois government under Thiers fled from the capital and the armed working people took the power into their own hands. In the classic writings on the Commune by Marx the heroic role played by women is pointed out, and even contemporary bourgeois commentators were forced to admit the importance of women's participation in the Commune. In Benoit Malon's words: "One important fact among all those brought to light by the Paris revolution is the entry of women into politics. Under the pressure of circumstances, and through the spread of socialist ideas... they felt that the cooperation of women was indispensable to the triumph of the social revolution. " Moreover, the official parliamentary inquiry into the 18th of March insurrection confirms this: over 1,000 women were arraigned before the Councils of war. How many others were killed at the barricades and in the great slaughters during the "bloody week" will never be known.
Although women had actively participated in the great battles of the 1789 revolution, and in those of 1848, they had received no recognition of their rights. The Jacobin Republic of 1793 had proclaimed universal male suffrage, the right to work and the right to education, but had not extended these basic rights to women. When the First International was founded in 1864, the French section was more or less dominated by Proudhon's reactionary ideas on women. Not only was Proudhon very hostile to the idea of women going out to work but he also attempted to demonstrate that women were inferior to men from a physical, moral and intellectual standpoint. His advice to young men was "If you want to get married, understand at the influence within the French section was such that in 1866 it had drawn up a statement against the participation of women in industry. This however did not prevent women from belonging to the First International and from challenging these views by actively organising themselves around basic demands.
During the Second Empire the only way women in Paris were able to earn a pittance, and this for an 11-hour day, was by doing needlework. But the convents and religious orders gave the dressmakers great competition by supplying work at prices 25% lower than those of the working women. This competition was not, perhaps, irrelevant to the anticlericalism of the Commune women. As it was virtually impossible for women to live off their starvation wage alone they were forced to "marry", whether legally or not, and keep house and children into the bargain. Conditions became even more appalling during the great siege of the 1870 winter; unemployment had become rampant; with the capital cut off from the rest of the country, food was almost unobtainable. Women had to queue for hours for rations, in the snow and cold. It was at this time that some women, especially two members of the International, Louise Michel and Nathalie Lemel, began to set up organisations which were to lay the foundations for the Commune. Food kitchens were started to provide workers with food at a low price; an organising committee was set up to integrate the various catering, supply and production cooperatives. In certain areas Vigilance Committees run only by women were created. Apart from these activities, the women were also acting as nurses and ambulance women. carriers for the National Guards. More important still, all this work was combined with intensive political education and propaganda work for the First International.
The Actions of the Commune When the victory of the Commune was proclaimed, "largely due to the intervention of