Women's projects and co-operatives in France at the beginning of the 19th century

Seamstresses, washerwomen and midwives establish co-operatives in order to organise their own work, independent of employers, and to divide their profit amongst themselves and to assure a reserve for harder times, for periods of sickness, for their old age. Women's collectives publish feminist magazines, including a daily newspaper by and for women; they found co-operative schools or an organisation for the support of single mothers. Women live in communes, make plans for women's houses and women's meeting-centres. And all this took place in the France of 1830–1848.In my paper, I would like to present some of the self-organised women's projects and co-operatives of that time and thereby also uncover information and sources which have remained buried under prevailing historiography. Moreover, my further intension is to refuse the commonly-held prejudice which dismisses the ‘proletarian’ or ‘socialist’ Women's Movement of the 19th century far too easily as having been ‘male-dominated’, a verdict frequently passed in Women's Studies in Germany. In view of this, it seems to me important to highlight historically the autonomous projects of proletarian and socialist women and to pay appropriate tribute to their significance for the history of the Women's Movement (not only in France!). Finally. I would like to approach a methodical problem which confronts me again and again in my work: the contradiction between historical distance and personal proximity and identification with the historical theme. By this, I mean the toilsome process of approaching history as something which is extraneous and yet related to us; this problem of, on the one hand not wiping out our present-day knowledge, feelings, values and norms from our research, and on the other hand, not using these as a distorted gauge from the women of former times.