My Son Will Not Go to War: Motherhood, Feminism, and Pacifism in Britain between the World Wars

In the aftermath of the First World War, many British feminists argued that if women had been formally included in politics such a devastating conflict would not have occurred. In an effort to prevent another global war, these women embraced internationalism, focusing much of their political energies on campaigns for disarmament and building a lasting international peace. At the same time feminist activists pushed for the greater inclusion of women in politics as voters, political leaders, and diplomats. The rise of fascist regimes in Italy and Germany was alarming for British feminists because of their bellicose policies and the limited roles they prescribed for women as wives and mothers.

Scholars have not adequately analyzed the nature of feminism in Britain in the decades before the Second World War. The interwar period has been viewed as a moment when the women’s movement devolved into “new” or essentialist feminism, with a focus on women’s needs as mothers and wives rather than attaining equality. This paper argues that the maternalist arguments made by some British women in this period should be viewed as a genuine feminist response to the policies of fascist governments in Europe and the British government’s gendered conception of women’s role within society. Feminists combined a discussion of their control over their bodies and reproduction with the promotion of their pacifist foreign policy agenda. An analysis of the intersection between motherhood and pacifism can thus shed new light on the nature of British feminism between the two world wars.