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International Labor and Working-Class History

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2026

Florence Eugénie Loriaux

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Florence Eugénie Loriaux* Affiliation:

Centre d’animation et de recherche en histoire ouvrière et populaire CARHOP, Braine-le-Comte, Belgium

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Abstract

Several historians have already examined the presence and role of women in the sections of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) in Belgium, as well as in the beginnings of the first trade union organizations. All agree that the subject is extremely complex to address, given the lack of evidence. Nevertheless, women emerge from the shadow and mobilize themselves in the struggle against social injustices. They are seen in Verviers, Liège, and Charleroi. Women’s mobilization is attested during the 1860s and 1870s, but their admission into the IWMA is far from an evidence and sparked off numerous debates within the bodies of workers’ organizations. When they are actively present, women participate in debates concerning, in particular, the economic and social issue of the place of women in the world of work, and more specifically in coal mines. When the movement declines because of tensions and divisions within the International itself and to the repression carried out against the leaders of the IWMA in Belgium, the sections gradually disappear or transform into rationalist societies. The most consistent sources of our knowledge remain the workers’ press (such as Le Mirabeau), but especially the archives of the police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and State Security, which monitored the meetings of the International as well as all trade union movements.

Keywords

BelgiumInternational Workingmen’s Associationlabor movementtrade unionismwomen

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Type Special Feature

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International Labor and Working-Class History , First View , pp. 1 - 17

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547926100325 [Opens in a new window]

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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.

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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc.

The founding of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA) in London in 1864 marks a major historiographical milestone in workers’ organizations. However, an examination of the situation in BelgiumFootnote 1 raises a central question: how was women’s labor viewed at the time? What was the actual involvement of women in this emerging movement? In a context of structural changes brought about by the industrial revolution, what was the nature of their demands and the impact of their commitments?

A prosopographic challenge

While historiography has occasionally taken up the question of the role of women in the beginnings of the Belgian workers’ movement, researchers agree on the complexity of such an object of study, which relies on fragile and incomplete sources. By 1968, Professor Jan Dhondt highlighted this difficulty: “The elements are so tenuous and almost imperceptible that the whole issue risks going unnoticed.”Footnote 2 The social background of these activists, most of whom came from the working class, explains the lack of self-centered sources (diaries, correspondence, etc.), as writing remained the exception in this milieu.

Consequently, the reconstruction of these trajectories relies essentially on an analysis of press reports (whether working-class-oriented or not) and on the archives of the police, the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the State Security Department.Footnote 3

However, the absence of mention in the sources should not be correlated with an absence of activism. Whether they were workers or bourgeois, many figures exerted a decisive influence, beyond the silence of the archives. It is a question of rereading the sources and analyzing them in order to bring out what they do not say and to identify the elements of a strategy in specific areas of action. In this context, it is interesting to expand the field of biographical studies to groups of individuals who shared a common situation or characteristic and to cross-reference all these life studies based on the particular cases initially observed in order to identify typologies. In short, this means applying the inductive method well-known in the sciences which tends, “starting from an observation of particular features, carried out as far as possible without preconceived ideas, to proceed by means of progressive abstractions, so as to go beyond the degrees of apparent or superficial resemblances and differences, and to reach the degrees of real resemblances and differences.”Footnote 4 The work of Jean Maîtron, with his monumental Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français et international [Biographical Dictionary of the French and International Labor Movement], serves as the basis for multiple researches that make it possible to draw general lessons from all of these activists’ lives. Through this approach, we will have made a detour toward individualism and the particular only to return to the collective and the general, but with the advantage of being able to safeguard the finesse of details and the complexity of reality, unlike a direct global approach that would risk losing too much valuable information from the start. It is undoubtedly thanks to this prosopographic method that women will be able to emerge from invisibility.

Gender bias and visibility through marital and family status

The invisibility of women in police reports also testifies to a gender bias in the perception of how dangerous these social actors were: women were often relegated to the rank of mere sympathizers or companions, and they were only rarely identified by name by officers, who did not perceive them as a real major political threat (with a few rare exceptions).

Many of these protagonists were also identified through the lens of their marital status or their role of mother or sister, with the private sphere then becoming a vector of visibility among activist couples within the nascent workers’ movement. Rose-Françoise Bouilly,Footnote 5 a housewife who became a canteen worker during the Commune, came to take refuge in Ixelles with her husband. However, “this rabid Communard” (as she is described in police reports) was only identified in relation to her husband Joseph Narcisse Puissant, a member of the International, who would take an active part in the Belgian organization and joined the “Solidaires” movement.Footnote 6 The only thing known about her is that “she is more exalted than he is.” A list of the main Verviers leaders of the IWMA was compiled by the police, who identified three hundred and eighty activists in the region in 1873. Of the two hundred sixty-five couples recorded, one hundred wives were reported to be members of the IWMA.Footnote 7 Pierre FlucheFootnote 8 paid tribute to his wife, Marie-Élisabeth Hernay, a textile worker:

It is a great help and a great necessity to have such a sincere and devoted companion in this struggle that constitutes the life of ours, the activists of the socialist ideal. Those women who constantly understand us and support us are rare. They even must show much more courage than we do to meet the demands of social duty.Footnote 9

Class solidarity expressed itself particularly in case of widowhood, a time when the activist community may set up fundraising campaigns for support. Beyond this charitable dimension, some wives received authentic symbolic recognition for their militant commitment. For instance, on February 9, 1880, the Brussels section of the International suspended its deliberations because of the announcement of the death of Jeanne Costaguja,Footnote 10 wife (common-law wife, according to Jean Puissant) of Désiré Brismée.Footnote 11 The funeral eulogy delivered in praise of her highlighted her commitment when she welcomed exiles from the Paris Commune into her home: “All the speakers praised the wife Brismée, who, during her lifetime, had opened her door to all revolutionaries. Her conduct earned her the nickname ‘Mother.’”Footnote 12

Most of them came here without resources. Désiré Brismée, in spite of his poverty, opened his home to everyone, and all day long, his elderly companion made coffee and cut slices of bread to feed the starving outcasts. Oh! What these unfortunate people suffered during the first days of their exile is unimaginable.Footnote 13

Notably, in June 1870, she helped Eugène Varlin,Footnote 14 who took refuge in Belgium while the French government was prosecuting the leaders of the International. The printing press that she managed after the death of her first husband, the printer Joseph Voglet, enabled her to participate in the dissemination of socialist ideas by publishing newspapers and books that were otherwise banned, particularly in France.

However, this proximity to their husbands’ political activism exposed women to increased precariousness, turning them into collateral victims of repression. The life story of Jeanne Albertine Brismée (1847–1869), daughter of Désiré Brismée and first wife of Eugène HinsFootnote 15—secretary of the Belgian General Council of the IWMA—tragically illustrates this reality. While her husband was imprisoned following the strikes in the mining areas of Seraing and the Borinage in 1869, Jeanne Hins, pregnant and weakened by illness, was systematically denied any visit right by the examining magistrate. Despite multiple requests from the defense, judicial intransigence persisted. It was only after four weeks of detention that Hins regained his freedom, returning home to be with his wife when she breathed her last.Footnote 16 Paul RobinFootnote 17 urged all members present to spread the word so that there would be as many people as possible on Wednesday 19th of this month attending the funeral of Mrs. Hins, née Brismée. “Let our presence,” he said,

be a new protest against the authorities, against the arbitrary arrests and searches which have been carried out at International members homes. Let us pay tribute to the woman who thought as we do, who dies a victim of the atrocities that the authorities inflicted on her husband. Let’s show the government who we are.Footnote 18

A working-class milieu marked by “proletarian anti-feminism”

Before the age of mass industrialization, women’s professional activity, which was mostly domestic and unpaid, largely escaped the indicators of economic visibility. The social definition of women thus crystallized around their reproductive and domestic roles, with productive activity (agricultural, textile or commercial, etc.) being perceived only as an extension of the private sphere, strictly dependent on the family situation.

In the nineteenth century, industrialization mobilized an abundant workforce, massively integrating women into factories, glassworks and coal mines. This transformation dismantled the bowdlerized image of women’s work. The upsurge of mechanization and the division of labor favored the hiring of unskilled labor—women and children—whose production costs were much lower than those of men, resulting in a major comparative advantage for employers.

Most women’s jobs were poorly paid: on average, a woman’s salary was half that of a man. Enduring, like their male counterparts, endless workdays and hard living conditions condemned female workers to work for a so-called “supplementary” salary, which was often essential for survival. Employers’ rhetoric made use of gender stereotypes—docility, agility, endurance—to legitimize the exploitation of a devalued labor force. While industrialists downplayed the harshness of working conditions, describing them as tasks “commensurate with their strengths,” the observations of contemporaries, doctors and philanthropists, contradict this rhetoric.

Although the presence of women in the workforce is well documented in Belgium during the nineteenth century,Footnote 19 many professional workers’ organizations, fearing their competition and the downward pressure on men’s wages, enshrined their exclusion in their bylaws. This was the case among glove makers, hat makers, dyers, for whom “women are rigorously excluded from the workshops of the Union, as matters of interest and morality preclude their admission,”Footnote 20 even among typographers.Footnote 21 In associations that accepted women, such as the weavers’ fraternal association De Broederlijke Maatschappij der Wevers, Footnote 22 they were not invited to votes or to conferences and meetings.Footnote 23 However, an article published in the newspaper of the Ghent trade union association, the Werkverbond, on September 23, 1860, testified to some interest in training women workers about these debates:

The meeting on September 10, organized by the weavers’ society, was a great success. This time, access was not forbidden to women, and although this innovation seems to be a frivolity to some, it is a useful measure that can bear fruit. Due to a lack of experience, women have often been an obstacle to the establishment of such societies. It is therefore important to inform them on the reasons why men join unions.Footnote 24

A major structural obstacle to women’s involvement in a nascent workers’ movement undoubtedly lay in the requirement to pay a membership fee. In a context of wage disparity, the application of a uniform rate, modelled on men’s incomes, proved prohibitive for female workers.

In 1865, when the IWMA began to settle in Belgium starting with the Brussels section,Footnote 25 the latter had the ambition to expand its action to all industrial areas. The project was not without risk as the country, plagued by numerous economic fluctuationsFootnote 26 (marked by price increases and wage cuts), was experiencing a large number of strikes and demonstrations.Footnote 27 Workers had to be convinced of the interest of the association in this particular context. The Belgian sociopolitical system, supported by the police, was firmly locked. Revolt movements were quickly quelled. As for the apathy of the working class caused by debilitating living and working conditions, it played into the hands of a bourgeois ideology according to which the deprivation of the working class was largely overrated and workers’ misery a false problem. The contempt for the working class was sometimes so great that it ended up in denying them the merit of resignation by considering it as instinctive and, in a sense, hereditary. It should be remembered that workers were legally stuck by a series of articles of the Penal Code prohibiting any coalition.Footnote 28 Finally, the Belgian federation of the IWMA was established in 1865.Footnote 29

A question of the legitimacy of women’s work?

As far as the legitimacy of women’s work is concerned, positions were diverse and divergent, but they reflected the conception of the role of women, which, in public mentalities, was linked to the image of the housewife. Quickly, two opposing camps crystallized around the issue of women’s work, fracturing the Belgian section of the IWMA. At the 1867 Geneva Congress, this doctrinal divergence was expressed through the presentation of two separate reports. A first report, presented by César De Paepe,Footnote 30 marked by Proudhonian influence, argued for the exclusion of women from the productive sphere and their return to the home. It represented the feeling of the majority of the Belgian section: “The emancipation of women requires that they be torn away from industry to become housewives, from prostitution to become wives and mothers, from ignorance and superstition to become educators. Any other conception of women’s liberation, as defended by other socialist systems, is contrary to the interests of the workers.”Footnote 31 On the other hand, a minority faction, represented by Prosper Esselens, Eugène Hins and Paul Robin, advocated for the participation of women in trade union life, on an equal basis with men, in order to fight together “for the emancipation of labor, which alone can ensure common independence” and considered women’s labor as a necessary evil.

In Belgium, although the sections of the IWMA were accessible to women, a hostile movement nevertheless persisted toward them.Footnote 32 Thus, in April 1867, in a letter addressed to the Free Association of Typographers to solicit their affiliation with the International, the secretary of the General Council reminded that the place of women should be at home:

You complained about the unfair competition you face from apprentices and women. Well, what are these apprentices? The sons of workers. And those women who desert the home to come compete with you in the workshop? The daughters and wives of workers. Do you understand, then, that if a close alliance united you with workers of other trades, you would deprive your employers of this last weapon that they have left against you? For, comrades, no more than you do we believe that a woman’s place is in the workshop. It is essentially in the family home, where her abandonment leaves a void through which disorder creeps in.Footnote 33

A social role? But a committed one

Women were thus categorized in roles within the social field, but they were nevertheless firmly established in the public sphere and in action. They were seen attending meetings and conferences, and they could become members of associations dedicated to providing material aid to refugees, particularly those from the Commune, such as “L’Affranchissement,” created in 1854, “Les Solidaires,” an association set up in 1857 that provided civil funerals for its members, or “Les Cosmopolitains,” an organization formed in 1875. Membership in these associations was most often shared by couples. Women members often initiated fundraisings for refugees; they accompanied their husbands or fathers to banquets or concerts organized by the Internationalists and/or the Communards, where they did not hesitate to sing, not only romantic ballads but also democratic and republican songs. They took charge of caring for the sick and dying, as well as organizing funerals, which they attended in great numbers … Julienne Sébert,Footnote 34 who cared for and prepared the catafalque for the lawyer, publicist and Communard Gustave Tridon, is a prime example of these identifying characteristics. Born in Lille in 1824, she married a printer, François Frémaux. She settled in Paris as a corset-maker. Her encounter with Auguste Blanqui was decisive for her political commitment. Expelled from France in 1851, she settled in Brussels. Returning to France following the amnesty, she was sentenced, along with Blanqui, to one year in prison for membership in a secret society, as well as a fine of one hundred francs and a two-year deprivation of her civil rights. Once she was released from prison, she moved back to Brussels and opened a tobacco shop there. Considered a savior for all exiles, she welcomed exiled Internationalists and Communards. She took part in many festive events organized by associations, attended the funerals of proscribed ones, sang in concerts …. Thereafter, she experienced poverty since in 1875, a money collection was organized in her favor. Once back in Paris, she died there on May 28, 1882.

Although women were not part of decision-making bodies, this did not prevent them from undertaking extremely important specific missions in international exchanges. This was the case of Eugénie Dumont from Liège:Footnote 35 a multilingual translator, she exercised her skills in favor of the socialist movement by taking on the task of “translating German, Russian and Portuguese newspapers into French”Footnote 36 and by translating the work of Ferdinand Lasalle. Another example: Marie Iatskevich,Footnote 37 a Russian schoolteacher and IWMA activist, is identified as a treasurer of the Paris International. She is better known as “Citoyenne Marie” upon her marriage with the Belgian Internationalist Eugène Hins. She worked as a cashier at the cooperative canteen “La Marmite.” Once the siege of Paris was lifted on February 6, 1871, the couple first took refuge in Brussels and then in Verviers, before choosing to go into exile in Russia in 1872. Marie and Eugène Hins taught in Kiev and Saint Petersburg, and returned to Belgium in 1880.

Despite egalitarian principles, hostility toward women workers persisted

On the ground, the majority of militants remained hostile to the female activist and worker,Footnote 38 even if both women and men were arrested for striking or killed during crackdowns. During the Moulin de Marchienne-au-Pont riot on February 2, 1867, motivated by the high cost of flour and bread,Footnote 39 two thousand people pillaged the mill’s flour reserves and a detachment of twenty-five soldiers fired at the crowd, killing three workers and wounding several others, in the presence of several hundred workers’Footnote 40 wives. Twenty-nine other defendants, most of them coal miners, including six women, were charged with looting and rebellion against the police during the attack on the mill. Put in prison, they were finally tried at the end of July 1867. Ten of them, including four women, were acquitted. Two women, Clémentine and Émilie Chaussier, were sentenced to eight months in prison and a fine of two hundred francs.Footnote 41

The severe repression that hit the Belgian strikers clearly led the IWMA to turn its attention to Charleroi for the first time. This would have contributed to the fact that, a year later, in contrast to the attitude adopted in 1867, the Belgian section intervened very quickly when the strike initiated by the miners of the Gouffre de Châtelineau was harshly suppressed by troops on March 26, 1868, at the Charbonnage de l’Épine (Montignies-sur-Sambre), killing ten workers (including two women) and injuring many others.Footnote 42

The role of the IWMA was not to finance strike movements or to provoke them, but

to organize the working class, to discipline it and to make it conscious and practical, and to come to the aid of the workers’ defense …. During the session of April 12, 1868 [the Brussels group decided] to set up a committee which, 1. would take care of finding lawyers who would plead the case of the accused minors; 2. would raise funds to cover the costs of the trial and would provide support for the prisoners, as well as their families, and also the widows and orphans of the victims.Footnote 43

The year 1869 marked a major judicial and symbolic turning point during the strike movements in the Borinage region. Among the twenty-two defendants brought before the Mons Assize Court, the presence of five women emphasized the active, although often overlooked, involvement of women workers in social conflicts. Defended by a group of Brussels lawyers mandated by the IWMA, all the defendants were finally acquitted. This verdict served as a powerful catalyst for the structuring of the working class, leading to the creation of about forty-two associations in the Charleroi basin.

During these events, the public perception of women’s activism was largely shaped by a press whose treatment of events proved particularly acerbic. It depicted the role of women through the lens of scandal and regularly discredited the legitimacy of their claims or their presence in the public sphere:Footnote 44 Activists were often presented as “pétroleuses,” which in the popular press is an insult.

A necessity: Organizing women

While the Belgian Federation believed that the place of mothers was not in the workshop, other women had nevertheless to be organized into resistance societies:

We often hear complaints about the competition that women pose to men in the workshops since the introduction of machines that can lighten all physical efforts. To these complaints we will reply: if we have succeeded in manufacturing all the products necessary for life, useful and pleasant, with machines so complicated, so ingenious, that it is enough to touch them with a fingertip to make them work, and if these machines were owned by the workers and worked for their profit, we would benefit from progress, and not complained about it. People complain because it is beneficial only to a few individuals, to the detriment of others. Only the mother of a family must be excluded from the workshops, for the general well-being of society; she has a special mission which she must leave to mercenary hands if she goes to the workshop. But women must also be organized into a resistance society …Footnote 45

This transition from the shadows to collective action testifies to a desire for political positioning where, beyond domestic assignments, women assert themselves as full-fledged actors in social justice and in the professional issues of their time. A few women’s organizations did indeed develop, particularly in Charleroi and Verviers; some were short-lived, while others were more lasting, even if the functioning of these groups is not fully known to us.

Another measure that could remedy the wage freeze would be to prohibit or, at the very least, regulate the employment of women and children, which is not only reprehensible because of the harsh conditions imposed on these more fragile persons, but also because it introduces unfair competition with male workers. This idea, which was often deceitfully expressed to condemn women’s labor, found, in the context of mining activity, real grounds that it would be difficult to dispute honestly.

The presence of women in underground mining work also induced tensions. Viewed at best as a “necessary evil”Footnote 46 imposed by the poverty of the households, this work was increasingly condemned by social observers and workers’ organizations. The preservation of the physical integrity of women workers became a public health issue as well as a lever for regulating the labor market. In 1868, Dr. Hyacinthe Kuborn’s report on La question de l’emploi des femmes dans les travaux souterrains des mines [The issue of women’s employment in underground mining] marked a turning point in social awareness. He demonstrated that the harshness of industrial labor not only caused irreversible physiological deformations but also altered reproductive functions, thereby calling into question the equilibrium of the social body. The women activists who expressed themselves on this issue were also firmly opposed to it. At the Congress of the Belgian section of the IWMA on June 5 and 6, 1870, Léonie Andrès,Footnote 47 delegate of the women’s section “Les Prévoyantes” from Montignies-sur-Sambre, testified to the active propaganda targeting female workers and denounced the employment of women and girls in the coal mines, a

work that we believe is not necessary for them to raise their families and absolutely contrary and harmful to their gender, to standard morals, and to public hygiene. Our female coalminers in the Charleroi basin have become sickly and deformed, all with swaying hips and almost incapable of giving birth to children in the ordinary way, that is to say, without necessarily having to go through cruel surgical tortures, without seeing their children pulled from their wombs piece by piece, dead or crippled, without most of them perishing. If our sex no longer worked in the pits, our exploiters would no longer be able to pay us a wage that is trifling compared to that of men, and would be forced to hire more workmen to do our work, and consequently, to pay them as men are paid with a higher wage; thus, our husbands and brothers would provide for the needs of the family in our place. The latter would then work and be managed like all the other families in non-coal-mining countries, that is to say, the women would run their households better, and their husbands and children would find better prepared and healthier food; they would take better care of their children; they would bring them up better than they are now; most of them would at least be able to learn trades suited to their constitution, such as linen maid, seamstress and laundress, etc.Footnote 48

A functional women’s organization: The case of Verviers

The Verviers’ basin, one of the spearheads of the textile industry, was distinguished by a sociological peculiarity: the predominant and visible involvement of women at the heart of social struggles. Under the influence of the “Société des Francs Ouvriers” [Free-Workers’ Society] (created in February 1867), whose affiliation with the IWMA strengthened its capacity for mobilization, the industrial landscape of Verviers saw the emergence of a dense network of workers’ associations in Ensival, Pepinster, and Dison. These bodies were not limited to a representative function, but they institutionalized workers’ solidarity through the creation of resistance funds.Footnote 49

In February 1872, the Verviers dynamic took a new step forward with the launching of a women’s section of the International. The example of GenevaFootnote 50 and the creation of the section called “Les Prévoyantes” in Montignies-sur-Sambre (Hainaut) were undoubtedly inspiring. Initially established as a free mutual aid society, this organization underwent a strategic change in July 1872 by transforming itself into a resistance fund. The financial accessibility of membership, set at twenty-five cents per month, allowed for a democratization of women’s union involvement despite their precarious wages.

The program of this section went beyond mere material demands to embrace a perspective of female emancipation, associating the struggle for women workers’ rights with a commitment to secularism. The robustness of this organization enabled it to survive the dissolution of the International in 1874: in 1879, it still had nearly two hundred members, which testifies to an exceptional militant base for the time, before its disappearance in May 1881. Meetings were held several times a month: The presidency was held by members on a rotating basis, and there was a secretary position. The association also ran a cooperative store. It is within this association that leading figures such as Marie MineurFootnote 51 and Hubertine RuwetteFootnote 52 distinguished themselves. Their life stories testify to a genuine political consciousness.

Marie Mineur and Hubertine Ruwette served as delegates at congresses organized in Belgium. They attended the Belgian Congress of the IWMA held in April 1873 in Verviers, the 1874 Christmastime Belgian Congress, and the final International Congress of the IWMA, held in Verviers in September 1877. Marie Mineur was present that same year at the socialist congresses in Ghent and Brussels. Both activists were deeply involved in regional propaganda, by participating in meetings and organizing conferences beyond the Verviers region, thus appropriating a space in public debate. Another activist, Marie Delgoffe,Footnote 53 a rope maker, spoke on several occasions in the Centre region and in rationalist circles before emigrating to Argentina, along with other Verviers anarchists, in the mid-1880s. The reconstruction of this propaganda campaign owes much to the work of Freddy Joris,Footnote 54 whose biographical study of Marie Mineur allows us to grasp the substance of her speeches at regional meetings.

The intra- and international circulation of motivations for women’s activism

It was perhaps their encounter with Mina Puccinelli that served as an impetus for their activism. A strong, multifaceted personality, Wilhelmine Müller, better known as Mina PuccinelliFootnote 55 or Mina the Republican, a Communard, widow of a Communard, author, journalist, militant for the republican cause and former captain of The Avengers of Death under the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, was closely monitored by the immigration police upon her arrival in Belgium in 1871Footnote 56 when she applied for membership in the Brussels section of the International. Her living environment was watched, her morality monitored, and her male acquaintances kept under surveillance. Organizing meetings in Brussels, Liège, Verviers, Dison, and in other places, she addressed women and “urged them to espouse the ideas of socialism and told them that the triumph of the ideas promoted by this society, on which social regeneration depended, rested only on them. Five to six hundred people attended, including about fifty women.”Footnote 57 The surveillance did not get trimmed:

On November 4, she gave a conference for women only. There was a great number of them. What Puccinelli preached to them was devotion to the International, that is to say, contempt for the laws. On November 7, in Ensival, she held a meeting attended by several hundred people, many of whom were women. The crowd grew even larger as workers left their various factories. Mina Puccinelli spoke about reducing working hours and raising wages. In conclusion, she endeavored to urge women to join the labor movement. With passionate words, she tried to convince them that without them, there was no possible success. She was applauded very warmly.

“Madame Puccinelli strikes me as a prime-cut Communard,” wrote a police officer to the commissioner of Verviers,

because she relates some events that happened during that time. This woman is dangerous, and I am inclined to believe that, if she gave a few lectures, she would carry all the female workers of our little town away, for she speaks with an eloquence capable of capsizing the hearts of those few unfortunate Internationalists.Footnote 58

Police reports continued to portray her as a “rabid republican” mandated by the Belgian section of IWMA to recruit the female part of the working-class population. She was called an “Amazon with dangerous arguments” before being expelled from Belgium in November 1871. However, her words were heard by hundreds of women who may have been made aware of the issue of female emancipation.

Another major figure in socialist activism and feminism, Anna Kuliscioff,Footnote 59 then the partner of Andrea Costa,Footnote 60 also went to Belgium to attend various congresses, including the 9th General Congress of the IWMA, often referred to as the 9th Autonomist or Antiauthoritarian General Congress, held in Verviers from September 6–8, 1877. This was followed by the Ghent Congress (September 9–14, 1877), final attempt by advocates of reviving the IWMA, whereas anarchists and supporters of political action confronted each other.

Gaining visibility through the press

The Verviers IWMA’s publication, Le Mirabeau, was a medium of visibility for the action of these female leaders. Through the regular publication of an “Appeal to Women,” they developed a traditionalist view of the gendered division of labor and denounced the alienation of industrial work:

If men complain, women have all the more reason to do so. The woman has to leave her young children to go to the workshop and is still unable to give them bread on her salary … We count on the involvement, not of bourgeois women, but of poor women like us, who feel all the injustice of their situation.Footnote 61

Reinventing ideology within rationalist movements

The decline of the movement, precipitated by internal doctrinal tensions and the increase of repression against the IWMA’s leadership in Belgium, led to a structural reconfiguration. Faced with the weakening of trade union sections, activism shifted toward rationalist societies in which women were admitted on an equal footing with men. These workers’ rationalist societies (“L’Affranchissement,” “Les Solidaires,” etc.) played a very significant role from 1860 onward in the slow development of Belgian socialism. “These associations not only constituted the first Belgian sections of the IWMA, but above all ensured the survival of socialism during its moments of failure and internal crises, after the decline of the International.”Footnote 62

Marie Mineur, a member of the rationalist group “Les Solidaires verviétois,” attended the congresses of the Federation of Rationalist Sections in 1879 and 1880, where she spoke out in defense of rationalist education.

In the nineteenth century, workers’ circles remained convinced for a long time that the place of women was not in the industrial world but in their homes, and it was mainly the struggle against the presence of women in the coal mines that motivated them.

Supporters of the anarchist tendency founded the “L’Étincelle” circle in Verviers in 1876. Among them were Émile Piette, Pierre Bastin, Gérard Gérombou, Marie Delgoffe, Olivier, and Toussaint Ruwette. The latter’s sister Hubertine Ruwette, who joined her partner, the French activist Antoine Didier, who had moved to Brussels in 1878, was also a propagator of the anarchist position in company with Gérard Gérombou’s wife, Marie Delgoffe.

Conclusion

A study of women’s presence and activities in Belgium during the First International reveals a multifaceted and often contradictory reality. While women participated in both mixed-gender trade unions and women’s organizations created on the fringe of institutions refusing their membership, the discourse about their professional legitimacy reflects an intense ideological debate. A minority, however, speaks in favor of women’s autonomy and organization as a political and social response. For female activists speaking out in the organization’s forums, even if they advocate for women’s return to the home, it is undoubtedly because they consider this as an argument in favor of

the emancipation of women, which requires that they be pulled out from industry to become housewives, from prostitution to become wives and mothers, and from ignorance and superstition to become educators. Any other conception of women’s liberation, as advocated by other socialist systems, is contrary to the interests of the workers.

But, until the proletarian revolution allows them to remain at home, they demand equal pay for equal work for female workers.Footnote 63

What is the legacy of these women’s struggles, some of which have fallen into oblivion, and how can we “unearth” them, to borrow the word of the historian Anne Morelli? One woman appears to have been brought to the forefront. The legacy of pioneer Marie Mineur experienced a major symbolic, commemorative, and political resurgence a century later. In 1970, a feminist group rooted in working-class communities was founded in La Louvière (Hainaut), spurred on by Jeanne Vercheval.Footnote 64 By choosing to name itself the “Marie Mineur,” this body testified to the continuity of the struggles for women’s rights. Today, two streets bear the name of Marie Mineur (in Verviers and in Monceau-sur-Sambre in the Charleroi region), as well as a bust in Verviers (9 mars 2024) and a committee room in the Parliament of Wallonia have been named after Marie Mineur (10 avril 2024), inscribing this activist’s work in the public sphere. Since 2018, the Verviers section of the Women’s Council of French-speaking Belgium has awarded the “Marie Mineur” Prize, and a non-profit organization was founded in 2023 by Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and University of Mons (UMons) to contribute to the socio-economic development of the Hainaut region.

The representation of women in Belgian street naming, however, remains historically very poor, though it is increasing thanks to policies promoting female visibility. It is undoubtedly through this initiative that we will be able to pay tribute to these grassroots militants, most of whom have remained anonymous, yet for many of whom speaking out in public or simply attending a meeting was the starting point of their social commitment. By dedicating their time, their energy, and their conviction to the labor cause in a social and cultural context that was not favorable to them, they thus step into the spotlight of memory, despite archival constraints.