outset that the prime requisite for a man is to dominate his wife and be the master." His the women who had covered the artillery with their own bodies, and even placed themselves at the muzzles of the guns, to prevent the latter being fired", the women had good reasons to support the new regime. In spite of the backward views held by most of the Commune leaders on women (for example they did not foresse for one single instant that women might have civic rights), certain measures were passed which affected them concretely. The Commune decreed that any rent payments made during the siege of Paris were to be deducted from future payments, that any tenant could cancel his lease during the next six months, and that tenants could not be evicted. They also decreed that pledges left at pawnshops could not be sold until further decrees established the regulations for dealing with these articles-especially toolsthe loss of which would hinder a worker finding new work. A decree of the 10th April affected the women even further; a pension of 600 francs was to be granted to the wife, legal or not, of any member of the National Guard killed while defending the Commune, and any children, legitimate or not, could collect a smaller pension until the age of 18.
Thus the recognition of free unions, outside the religious and bourgeois laws, were an important step forward. Similarly, any married woman who asked for separation from her husband was to receive an alimony.
With regards to education it was immediately seen necessary to organise a secular system of free education, and to make provisions for new schools for girls whose schooling had been so badly neglected. Workshops where women could apprentice to a trade, as well as schools of technical and industrial arts, were opened for A law passed by Edward Vaillant guaranteed equal pay for women teachers.
Many of the activities which had been initiated by the women during the siege were continued and developed. For example, to meet the problem of unemployment, the workshops that had been created offered women employment in the manufacture of military outfittings, cartridges, sandbags for the barricades, and other military equipment.
Through the organisation which they had established, for example the Clubs, many of which were open to women only, the work of political education of all women was taken up on a far more intensive scale. (They would for example hold regular discussion groups in the Clubs on such topics as the oppression of women under the Catholic Church, prostitution, their right to education, etc. Some women also realised the necessity of making appeals to gain support from the provinces.
Up to the last desperate battle and bloody slaughter, the women continued to provide all the essential nursing and canteen facilitie town, without which Paris would have succumbed much sooner.
The Meaning of Revolution To show not only the political awareness women had of the role they were playing fight for workers' emancipation, but also illustrate the relevance these have to the s today, we are reproducing below parts of official statements drawn up by women ir Commune.
"REVOLUTION WITHOUT WOMEN", b Andre Leo. May 8th 1871. "Can the revolution be made without wo ... The first revolution gave women the tit citizens but not the rights. It left them de of liberty and equality. Repulsed by the F tion, women fell back on Catholicism and its influence made up that great reactiona force, imbued with the spirit of the past, strangles each revolution at its birth.
When will it be realised that this has go long enough? When will the intelligence o republicans be able to comprehend their principles and serve their interests? ... The willing woman should not act against ther reject her assistance...
Why?
Because many republicans have only dethroned Emperor and God to take their themselves. And naturally to serve this de they must have subjects, male or female. Woman must be neutral and passive, unde man's direction: she has only changed her confessor ...
But the Revolution means liberty and responsibility for every human being, wit common rights as their only limit and wit any privilege of race or sex...
Now, who suffers most from the preser crisis, the dearness of food and the cessati labour? The woman, particularly the isola woman whom the new regime takes no m care of than the old. Who has least to gain immediately at any rate-from the success the Revolution? Again, the woman. It is n enfranchisement, not hers, that they are fi From one point of view the history of since "89 could well be written as the 'His of the Consequences of the Revolutionary Party'. The woman question would take u longest chapter, and in it we should read this Party managed to hand over to the en half of its troops, who asked no more thar be allowed to march and fight in its ranks Anna de Kasparis