67 P -
Leagues of Their Own: Intergovernmental Organizing and Transnational Feminisms in the League of Nations and Beyond
Friday, June 2, 2017: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
BRESL 106 (Hofstra University)
Chair:
Bonnie G Smith, Rutgers University
Comment:
Bonnie G Smith, Rutgers University
Session Abstract
This panel contributes to discussions of the intersection between feminist organizing, conceptualizations of the state and attempts to gain power through intergovernmental institutions. What draws the papers together is how they underscore women's attempts to seek support for their causes from the League of Nations. Whether they were acting on behalf of their own nation-states, or seeking redress for gender discrimination committed by their nation-states, these women saw in the League potential solutions to their problems. The League, for them, represented the possibility of a “world state,” an entity that could respond to the issues women faced at the level of their nation-states.
Between World War I and World War II , women from the Middle East, the Americas, Europe, and Africa were part of movements that used rhetoric about participatory democracy, citizenship, and belonging to create spaces for themselves in their own countries as well as in the international community. The campaigns that women brought to the League fused a range of activist projects: women's suffrage, women's rights, and anti-colonial nationalism. The successes and failures of their efforts reflected the racial, ethnic, and gender conditions of colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism in this period. The significance of the panel is its global perspective that archival research led us each to. The lessons learned -- and the conversations we hope to elicit -- are ones about privilege and position as well as how and why the legacies of these women's work might have an impact on current issues about intervention, independence, and gendered diplomacy.
To return to the previous page, click on the back arrow in your browser toolbar.
See more of: Traditional Panel
See more of: Traditional Panel