The Rise of Women's Transnational Activism

Identity and Sisterhood Between the World Wars

Marie Sandell

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781848856714
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857737304
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: Social Sciences

What characterised women's international co-operation in the interwar period? How did female activists from different countries and continents relate to one another? Marie Sandell here explores the changing experiences of women involved in the major international women's organisations - including the International Council of Women, International Alliance of Women, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and the International Federation of University Women - as well as the changing compositions and aims of the organisations themselves. Moving beyond an Anglo-American focus, Sandell analyses what the term 'international sisterhood' meant in this broader context, which for the first time included women from the beyond the Western world. Focusing on shifting identities, this book investigates how notions of 'sisterhood' were played out, and contested, during the interwar period and will be invaluable reading for scholars of women's history and twentieth-century world history.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The similarity of the measures women in different countries are working for is evidence that the interests of women everywhere are fundamentally the same.¹

This was the message delivered by Maud Wood Park, president of the National League of Women Voters in the United States, to the members of the International Alliance of Women (IAW) in the run-up to its 1923 conference in Rome. In her presidential address to this same conference, Carrie Chapman Catt declared that ‘women of all nations, races and religions are united together in the demand for individual freedom’.² Similarly, Professor Caroline Spurgeon, president of the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), proclaimed at its 1924 conference in Kristiania (now Oslo):

Our […] asset is that we are a body of women. This, I believe, in the present state of evolution with regard to the position of women, is a great bond and a great power […] It is clear that women have a certain community of interest, and I believe they do, as a whole, tend to view things slightly differently from men, at a slightly different angle; and to place their values differently.³

Although striving for equality with men, members of international women's organisations in the interwar period often emphasised what they perceived as the unique qualities of ‘womanhood’, referring to their ‘special power as women, as mothers, teachers, [and] heads of households’.⁴ Notions of gender difference and shared female characteristics lay firmly at the heart of the broader women's movement that had begun to take shape towards the end of the nineteenth century. The struggle for female suffrage, as well as campaigns to obtain better educational and employment opportunities for girls and women and improved legal rights for married women, drew upon the co-ordinated efforts of women operating at local, national and international levels, and so a fundamental role came to be played by the transnational bodies that grew out of national organisations in North America and Europe committed to female emancipation. The relationship between feminism and internationalism during this period has underlined that, while transnational feminist networks developed out of initiatives coming from national feminist organisations, the development of transnational networks also helped to stimulate feminist organisations at the local, national and regional levels.⁵ Just as in countries such as Britain, where women's movements rather than declining after securing the vote in fact broadened their agendas, so too international groups became more determined to reach a wider collection of women following World War I, raising all sorts of challenges about how to bring about the new kind of ‘sisterhood’ that this internationalism demanded.⁶

By the time that World War I had ended, three major international women's organisations had been formed: the International Council of Women or ICW (1888), the IAW (1904), and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom or WILPF (1915). That they were closely related is reflected in Rupp's suggestion that they should be viewed as ‘grandmother, mother and daughter’, as one in effect gave birth to another.⁷ All three were secular, had no particular political affiliation, and, from the outset, welcomed female members from around the world. Integral to all their activities was the belief, something that they shared with other women's organisations of the same vintage, that women could, and should, organise across national borders and racial and language differences since women in all societies were subordinated to men and being denied their rights.⁸ Hence, Lady Aberdeen felt moved to proclaim in her presidential address to the 1925 ICW conference in Washington that ‘[W]e impose no restrictions on those who join us […] because we welcome all to our sisterhood, of whatever creed, party, section, or class they may belong’.⁹ In fact, terms such as ‘sister’, ‘comrade’, ‘unity’, ‘bond’, ‘spirit’, ‘like-minded’ and ‘friendship’ were all commonly used during the interwar period to describe what were regarded as the special connections that existed between the members of women's organisations.¹⁰

My purpose in the chapters that follow is to focus on the growth of international women's organisations in the interwar period, which involved expanding their membership into countries beyond Europe and North America.¹¹ Building on Rupp's groundbreaking and inspiring work World of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement,¹² this book focuses on what remains a relatively understudied aspect of interwar world history, exploring the realities of the expanding international women's organisations of the interwar period, and how they were experienced by women belonging to the different nationalities involved. It examines the experiences of women (both Western and non-Western) involved in these organisations, what ‘international sisterhood’ meant to them, and, importantly, how notions of ‘sisterhood’ were played out, and contested, in various international women's organisations at this time. By interrogating more closely than has been the case in earlier literature the range of different kinds of transnational gatherings and conferences that took place, this book seeks to identify the nature of the interaction between women from the ‘non-West’ and the West, how women from the ‘non-West’ were perceived by their Western counterparts (not only by Americans and British but also by Nordic and other Western women), and vice versa. Importantly my analysis also incorporates the IFUW, an international women's organisation that has been more or less completely overlooked during this period, despite its very interesting and clear connections with the other better-known organisations, in terms of agenda, membership and achievement. Higher education, the key issue for the IFUW, was also of great significance to other international women's organisations in the interwar period. Not only were their memberships largely made up of educated upper and middle-class women, but their expansion into the non-West was also aided by non-Western students in the West, as they were often behind the development of national branches in their home countries.

Transnational or international?

The terms ‘transnational’ and ‘international’ have sometimes been used interchangeably by historians and are often loosely defined. However, there has been a marked increase in the use of the former and there is now much interest in transnational interpretations of history, which, broadly defined, examine movements and interactions of peoples and ideas that go beyond and cross the borders of nation-states.¹³ Transnational tends to emphasise and refer to the roles of non-state actors in these processes, while the term international deals with the interaction between nation-states and those representing these. In this way, a transnational organisation emphasises its members' goals, methods for achieving these, and their identities, regardless of the nationalities of their members, while an international organisation operates with the nation-state as a primary political unit and stresses co-operation between similar associations in different countries.¹⁴ This book has, thus, consciously chosen to include transnational both in the title and when describing the cross-border interactions of female activists of various nationalities representing their non-state networks in the interwar period under scrutiny here. Some of these organisations are more easily defined as transnational, for example WILPF, as it operated above national structures using peace as its unifying goal. Others, such as the ICW and the IFUW, display both transnational and international characteristics in that they engaged in transnational activism, yet are made up of a network of autonomous national associations.¹⁵ The use of terms is further complicated by the fact that international is incorporated in all these organisations' names, and the fact that these associations themselves often employed this term when describing their co-operation, congresses and goals of becoming, for example, ‘truly’ international – that is, extending their memberships around the world. This book will therefore also use the term international when appropriate, especially when describing these organisations' memberships and activities.

Feminism

Like any historical assessment of women's experiences, this study of international women's organisations has encountered difficulties over the definitions of, and how to use, the contested terms ‘feminism’, ‘feminist',¹⁶ and ‘international sisterhood’, with all their multiple meanings: for, as Tong has pointed out, ‘feminism is not a monolithic ideology, […] all feminists do not think alike, and […], like other time-honoured modes of thinking, feminist thought has a past as well as a present and a future’.¹⁷ Indeed, while some members of the various international women's organisations certainly described themselves as ‘feminist’, others deliberately rejected the label. Yet, all these organisations at different times still often used it when referring to those women who were committed to women's rights. The IAW was the organisation that most readily embraced the term and referred to its affiliations around the world as ‘feminist’;¹⁸ the IFUW, on the other hand, was the association most uncomfortable with any explicit mention of feminism. However, whereas some of the IFUW's members announced in no uncertain terms in 1923 that it was not a ‘feminist’ organisation, others within the same organisation just a few years later in 1929 argued that it dealt with what they referred to as ‘feminist’ questions.¹⁹

It is important to place discussion of the concept of feminism in its historical context. For instance, firstly, while the winning of the vote for women in many European countries following World War I, together with the rise of anti-feminist sentiments and pressure on women to return to the domestic sphere in the interwar period, influenced the direction of feminist movements there, feminist movements elsewhere in the world were actually developing and growing stronger alongside nationalist movements during this same period. And, secondly, although the argument that the British feminist/women's movements declined in the interwar period²⁰ has been successfully challenged,²¹ insufficient attention as yet has been directed to understanding what happened to women's international organisations during these same years.²² Therefore, the following chapters explore the interwar years, a period in which feminist movements/organisations underwent important transitions and when the definitions and priorities of feminism were increasingly debated at their forums.

The 1920s witnessed the growing influence of so-called ‘new feminism’, which emphasised women's difference from men, women's rights as women, and women's distinct contributions to society. It made demands for change based on women's traditional spheres, and, unlike the more established ‘equalitarian feminism’ that downplayed differences between the sexes, it rejected socially constructed gender roles and demanded women's equality with men.²³ Whether it was really ‘new’ at all has been debated,²⁴ yet it did emerge with a new rigour following the war. Categorising feminists into different groups, such as ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, ‘socialist’ and ‘evangelical’,²⁵ or grouping them according to whether or not they embraced ideas of ‘equality’ or ‘difference’, does not allow for the complexities involved in international women's organisations of the period.²⁶ International women's organisations comprised women who could be described as both ‘equalitarian’ and ‘new’ feminists. While the former label was more common to the members of the IAW and WILPF and the latter to those of the ICW and IFUW, the identities and agendas of women involved in these organisations remained complicated and were fundamentally about means rather than ends, which is why I avoid what I see as a false dichotomy between ‘equality’ and ‘difference’. Yet, all these organisations were undoubtedly united in their desire to improve the lives and status of women wherever they lived in the world. And despite their somewhat different focuses on political, social, educational and/or legal rights, and whether or not they believed that they would achieve equality in these areas through emphasising ‘equality’ or ‘difference’, it could be argued that all these international organisations moved to varying degrees in the direction of broader definitions of feminism with an emphasis on peace questions during the difficult interwar period, emphasising ‘humanism’ instead of ‘feminism’ and extending it to include the struggle for all human rights and social justice.²⁷

This turn to ‘humanism’ and/or ‘new feminism’ was clearly the result of the difficult circumstances in which female activists of this period operated. One outcome, it would seem, was that a broader set of agendas, capable of attracting a wider and more diverse membership, was adopted by at least some of them. In the case of the organisations explored here, their aim was to be as all-encompassing as possible. Being inclusive – ensuring that their doors were open to as wide a range of women from different national backgrounds as possible – was an important priority. Some, as their literature attests, were prepared to describe as ‘feminist’ any individual or institution that they believed was working to improve the status of women. Others, such as the ICW and IFUW, were much less willing to apply it to their own activities, even when they used the term in relation to others.²⁸ Transnational organisations such as the IFUW were clearly conscious of the need, as they saw it, to play down too overt a connection with feminism in the hope of being more acceptable to a wider cross-section of women and to society at large.

Thus, the fact that this period witnessed many different kinds of women's organisations, which were in various ways committed to improving the status of women in society but which had different ideas about what feminism signified and how useful it was for their campaigns, poses significant challenges in relation to how they should, or can, be labelled by historians. Yet, in the absence of a better working alternative, I will apply the term ‘feminist’, when appropriate, to label those women active in international women's organisations who, in my view and that of their contemporaries, recognised, opposed and took action to overcome, inequalities between women and men.

International sisterhood

The notion of ‘international sisterhood’, like the concept of ‘feminism’, has been debated vigorously by historians. Yet, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the international membership alone of newly established organisations such as the IAW was viewed as evidence of ‘universal sisterhood’.²⁹ The features of transnational co-operation in this earlier period, such as emphasis on the common subordination of women worldwide, solidarity based on ‘femaleness’ and the playing down of differences for the sake of unity in order to achieve wide support, continued after World War I. Even though the concept of ‘sisterhood’ itself is problematic to define, we find that in the interwar period it clearly pointed to the boundary of gender difference and the assumption that all women share certain characteristics as well as their common subordination to men worldwide. It also referred to a loyal relationship among members of international women's organisations based on a set of shared ideas and aims. Indeed, ‘international sisterhood’ tended to refer to women active in women's organisations, who knew that they were different from those who stood outside.³⁰ Women's involvement and activities in these organisations not only reinforced and emphasised their difference from men but also distinguished them from other women who were not committed to their cause. The idea of an ‘international sisterhood’ produced identification with and a sense of belonging to these networks, which bound these women together in a common cause. Apart from working for the empowerment of women, members of these organisations also united around other issues such as opposition to war, in particular WILPF, and the IFUW on the basis of their common educational background. Moreover, while those belonging to these organisa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• Part I Establishing an International Framework
• Part II Education, Travel and Regionalisation
• Notes
• Bibliography