Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Politics and International Relations

Second Department

French Studies

Reader 1

Sumita Pahwa

Reader 2

Julin Everett

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Abstract

The 1871 Paris Commune is commonly understood in terms of class struggle and socialist political experimentation. While these frameworks are relevant, they tend to overlook the extent of women’s participation in the Commune’s political, military, and logistical structures. This thesis argues that this omission is not accidental; rather, it reflects both the patriarchal assumptions embedded within key factions of the Commune – particularly the Proudhonians and members of the International – and the ways in which later historiographies of the event have been written. Focusing on the Communardes and organizations such as the Société du droit des femmes, this paper demonstrates that women were not simply participants in the Commune, but were actively developing a form of socialist feminism that brought together class-based politics with an awareness of gendered inequality. At the same time, their position within a divided revolutionary movement meant that they often had to prioritise broader revolutionary unity over specific demands such as suffrage. These compromises, while politically strategic, contributed to the way women’s contributions have been downplayed or overlooked in both histories of the Commune and accounts of French feminism more broadly. This piece argues that the Commune should be understood not as a unified revolutionary project but as a contested space in which questions of gender were central to both participation and the ways the event has been remembered.

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