Louise Michel–Marie Ferré group

The Louise Michel-Marie Ferré group was an anarchist and feminist group founded in Lyon, France, in 1880 and active during the 1880s. Bringing together about forty anarchists, it was the first or one of the first female anarchist groups in history. It occupies a notable place in the history of anarchism, marking the entry of women into the movement, developing numerous points of theory, and being among the first circles to fly the black flag.

While anarchism was undergoing ideological formation and beginning to spread across Europe, women remained sidelined and discriminated against within the movement. This situation began to evolve in the late 1870s when several anarchists supported their inclusion and they moved into anarchism. The Louise Michel group was founded in 1880 with the idea of gathering women into an anarchist organization of their own and thus organizing among themselves. Participating in conferences, some with Louise Michel, whose name they took before renaming themselves in honor of Marie Ferré, they distributed anarchist propaganda and wrote in the newspapers of the first period of the Lyon anarchist press. There, they defended new positions within the burgeoning political movement, including the intersectionality of feminist and anarchist struggles and the idea that a revolutionary alliance of women was possible at the national and international levels; they henceforth considered women as a revolutionary group in their own right and not as the supporters of men. Fanny Madignier, a notable member of the group, was implicated in the Assommoir bombing in October 1882 after making inflammatory remarks in support of the miners of the Montceau-les-Mines troubles. She subsequently disappeared and managed to flee the French authorities.

According to some historians, the group succeeded in creating a female anarchist network in France at the very least. Many other women's groups were created in parallel or subsequently based on its model; it spread demographically and thus marked a turning point for the place of women within the anarchist movement.