[...] The participation of women in the sixty days of popular government that we know as the Paris Commune (1871) was decisive, and among them was Louise Michel. Women were on the barricades, in the hospitals and in the editorial offices of the newspapers. Women took part in the revolutionary clubs and formed their own, among them the Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded, among whose founders was Louise Michel. In collaboration with the Commission for Labor, the Union promoted the employment of women, their unionization and demanded a greater role for women in the political and social life of the Commune [...]
In its short existence, the Commune implemented revolutionary measures, some of which were particularly favorable to women, thanks in part to the pressure they themselves exerted [...] In addition, a commission was created with the mission of creating a women's school to facilitate women's access to training, nurseries were created near the factories and, thanks to the impulse of the Russian internationalist Elizabeth Dmitrieff, public debate began on the need to equalize wages between the sexes [...]
The repression was fierce and also in the bloody week women had the protagonism they had demanded. Thousands of them died raising and defending barricades, others lived and were shot [...], some 30,000 people, mostly workers, were shot and 40,000 deported. Among the latter was Louise Michel [...]
Moreno Balaguer, Rebeca (coord.)(2019). Feminismos. La Historia. Madrid: Ediciones Akal.
From the figure of Louise Michel we can talk about the role of women, both in the industrial revolution and in the labor movement and the participation of women in the revolutions of the nineteenth century. Among the women who played a prominent role in the labor movement of the nineteenth century include the Saintsimonian precursors, the Owenians and Flora Tristan and, in Spain, Teresa Claramunt or the Cigarreras. For their part, revolutionary women at the beginning of the 20th century were Clara Zetkin, Lily Braun, Rosa Luxemburg and Alessandra Kollontai. And in libertarian feminism stood out Federica Montseny, Teresa Mañé, María Lacerda de Moura, Voltairine de Cleyre, the group Mujeres Libres en España, as well as the figure of Emma Goldman.