Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés

Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés (English: Women's Union to Defend Paris and Care for the Wounded) was a women's group during the 1871 Paris Commune.

About 130 served in the union's central committee. Actual membership is estimated as being a thousand or more.[1]

In April 1871, the group issued a call to Parisian women to form committees in each arrondissement for a collaborative women's movement in Paris's defense.[2] Nathalie Le Mel and Elisabeth Dmitrieff founded the group on April 11.[3]

In early May, the women's union issued a manifesto calling equal treatment of gender, in line with the Commune's annulment of privileges and inequalities.[4] The union also petitioned the Commune's economic director for work for women. He recommended organizing workshops for women to work at home, to be designed by the women's union. The group investigated the needs of unemployed women and created cooperative workshops. It did not designate roles based on trades but centralized the distribution of orders for women to complete and return to the workshop for delivery.[5] This system differed from the piece-work originally proposed by Commune officials, which would have preserved the order of women staying at home and previous style of labor. The union, instead, organized free producer associations to share out communal profits. They supported variety within trade work, elimination of gendered competition, reduced work hours, and equal pay for equal work[2]

References
  1. Jones & Vergès 1991, p. 715.
  2. Jones & Vergès 1991, p. 721.
  3. Sante, Luc (2015). The Other Paris. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-4299-4458-8.
  4. Jones & Vergès 1991, p. 718.
  5. Breaugh 2013, pp. 236–237.

Bibliography
  • Breaugh, Martin (2013). The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom. Columbia Studies in Political Thought/Political History. Translated by Lederhendler, Lazer. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-15618-9.
  • Jones, Kathleen; Vergès, Françoise (January 1991). "'Aux citoyennes!': Women, politics, and the Paris Commune of 1871". History of European Ideas. 13 (6): 711–732. doi:10.1016/0191-6599(91)90137-N. ISSN 0191-6599.
  • Schulkind, Eugene (1985). "Socialist Women during the 1871 Paris Commune". Past & Present (106): 124–163. JSTOR 650641.

Further reading
  • Archer, Julian P. W. (1997). "A Cataclysmic Finale 1870–1871". The First International in France, 1864-1872: its origins, theories, and impact. Lanham: University Press of America. pp. 239–289. ISBN 978-0-7618-0887-9.
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