2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

The first half of the twentieth century was an era of global war, marked by the rise of militarist regimes in Europe and Asia. It was also a period which witnessed the expansion of women’s rights, particularly in the United States and Europe. These three papers consider the politics of motherhood in three different contexts in order to make sense of the fight for women’s rights in this tumultuous period.

Specifically, this panel examines how women’s identities as mothers influenced their interactions with the state, and, in turn, how the gendered attitudes of the state shifted the politics, strategies, and identities of women. The individual papers will each analyze how women’s own ideas of motherhood were deployed to influence the state’s foreign policy, to gain political rights, or seek services and support from the state. Taken together these papers will examine the tension created when women relied on their own interpretation of their “traditional” roles as mothers as a means to reinforce, rather than undermine, their political claims. Such an examination is an important intervention in the study of feminism, as it illuminates the radical potential of the politics of motherhood in the U.S., Britain, and Germany, a dimension which is often overlooked.