In the early years of the Third Republic, there was no socialist movement, let alone an organised socialist party. There had grown up during the 1840s what the French called the ‘social movement’, but this broad term designated all those who sought greater social justice, from republicans and Freemasons to syndicalists and members of the International. The social movement was painfully reconstituted during the Second Empire, only to be crushed again. The repression of the Commune deprived the social movement of its working-class leaders and many of its followers in Paris, the traditional centre of the movement. In the decade following the Commune, a more specifically working-class movement began to emerge through a series of congresses which laid the basis for the parties which, during the following decade, became known as ‘socialist’ and began to distinguish themselves from the republicans.

The social movement of the Second Empire had not been notable for its support of women's rights. Although the Utopian socialists of the 1840s, like Cabet and Fourier, had been ardent champions of equality between the sexes, the sentiments of most republican and working-class militants in regard to women's roles were probably better expressed by Proudhon. In the 1870s, nothing indicated that the social movement if reconstituted would take a stand for women's equality with men.