Abstract

This article addresses the participation of women who played a leading role in the revolutionary days of 1871, seeking to dialogue with the different images and stories that have been built around their participation. After 150 years, it is necessary to ask again who were these protagonists and what were the reasons for their participation, looking beyond the renowned leaders and combatants that stand out in the memoirs. To this end, seeking to break with myths, idealizations and reductionisms, an analysis is developed that starts from the structural conditions of the working class and of the proletarian women in particular, both in the field of production and in the reproduction of the labor force, their forms of organization, participation in workers' associations, the link with feminist traditions; at all levels without losing sight of the tensions and contradictions. We seek in this way to understand what were the driving demands and roles of the thousands of "anonymous" women who were part of the vanguard of the defense of Paris and the first government of the working class.