More Than Half of Humanity: The Women Who Shaped the Peace of 1919
FAIN: FEL-257196-18
Mona Lesley Siegel
California State University, Sacramento Foundation (Sacramento, CA 95819-2605)
Preparation of a book about women’s global political activism and the Paris Peace Conference, a convening of World War I's allied victors who sought to establish the terms of peace in 1919.
More Than Half of Humanity will offer the first comprehensive account of women’s global political activism in the watershed year of 1919, when world leaders convened in Paris to deliver justice to a war-torn world. Largely excluded from the negotiating table by virtue of their sex, women nonetheless insisted that neither peace nor democracy could be secured if men persisted in excluding “more than half of humanity” from the halls of political power. From Paris to Zürich, and from Cairo to Shanghai to Washington, D.C., women organized conferences, stepped to the rostrum, and took to the streets, demanding a new political order that was democratic in fact as well as in name. Women’s achievements and disappointments in 1919 helped shape the political order that has existed in diverse corners of the globe ever since: one that largely celebrates women’s citizenship in theory even as it limits women’s participation in practice, particularly in matters of foreign affairs.
Associated Products
Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights after the First World War (Book)Title: Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights after the First World War
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: From the book jacket:
In the watershed year of 1919, world leaders met in Paris promising to build a new international order rooted in democracy and social justice. Female activists demanded that statesmen live up to their word. Excluded from the negotiating table, women met separately, crafted their agendas, and captured global headlines with a message that was both straightforward and revolutionary: enduring peace depended as much on recognition of the fundamental humanity and equality of all people—regardless of sex, race, class, or creed—as on respect for the sovereignty of independent states.
Peace on Our Terms follows dozens of remarkable women from Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Asia as they crossed oceans and continents, commanded meeting halls in Paris, Zurich, and Washington, D.C., and marched in the streets of Cairo and Beijing. Mona L. Siegel’s sweeping global account of international organizing highlights how Egyptian and Chinese nationalists, Western and Japanese labor feminists, white Western suffragists, and African American civil rights advocates worked in tandem to advance women’s rights. Despite significant resistance, these path-breaking women would leave their mark on emerging democratic constitutions and new institutions of global governance. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Peace on Our Terms is the first book to demonstrate the centrality of women’s activism to the Paris Peace Conference and the critical diplomatic events of 1919. Siegel tells the timely story of how female activists transformed women’s rights into a global rallying cry, laying a foundation for generations to come.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/peace-on-our-terms/9780231195102Primary URL Description: Columbia University Press
Secondary URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-Our-Terms-Columbia-International/dp/0231195109/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=peace+on+our+terms&qid=1574365708&sr=8-1Secondary URL Description: Amazon.com
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780231195102
Copy sent to NEH?: No
’No Women of the World Hate War and Seek Peace More than the Colored Women’: Mary Church Terrell’s Bid for Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in 1919 (Book Section)Title: ’No Women of the World Hate War and Seek Peace More than the Colored Women’: Mary Church Terrell’s Bid for Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in 1919
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Editor: Carl Bouchard and Normal Ingram
Abstract: This essay highlights the efforts of civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell to disrupt a world order rooted in patriarchy and white supremacy during the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Year: 2020
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Book Title: 1919: World (Dis)-Order
A Modern Mulan at the Peace Conference: The Nationalism and Feminism of Soumay Tcheng (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: A Modern Mulan at the Peace Conference: The Nationalism and Feminism of Soumay Tcheng
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: This paper highlights the efforts of feminist and nationalist peace delegate Soumay Tcheng to prevent China from signing the Versailles Treaty. It argues her extraordinary diplomatic activism was rooted in a desire to secure national self-determination for her nation and individual self-determination for all Chinese people, regardless of sex.
Date: 06/07/2019
Secondary URL:
https://trafo.hypotheses.org/8777Secondary URL Description: An interview with one of the principal organizers of the conference, which will take place next month.
Conference Name: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Challenge of a New World Order
In the Drawing Rooms of Paris: The Inter-Allied Women’s Conference of 1919 (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: In the Drawing Rooms of Paris: The Inter-Allied Women’s Conference of 1919
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: Even before the ink had dried on the Armistice, Western feminists were strategizing for the peace negotiations to come. “The world,” American President Woodrow Wilson had famously declared upon leading his country into World War I, “must be made safe for democracy.” If the peace to be forged in Paris was to bring democratic governance to the nations of the world, women needed to be there to remind global statesmen that neither democracy nor peace could be secured were they to exclude half of humanity. This paper examines Western feminists’ lobbying efforts in Paris in spring 1919, focusing on their attempts to secure women’s representation at the peace conference itself and to promote women’s political participation at both the national and international levels in the global order to come.
Date: 01/05/2019
Primary URL:
https://aha.confex.com/aha/2019/webprogram/Paper25304.htmlPrimary URL Description: 2019 AHA Conference Program
Conference Name: Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association
’No Women of the World Hate War and Seek Peace More than the Colored Women’: Mary Church Terrell’s Bid for Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in 1919 (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: ’No Women of the World Hate War and Seek Peace More than the Colored Women’: Mary Church Terrell’s Bid for Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in 1919
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: This paper examines African American feminist and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell’s advocacy of racial justice and sexual equality in Europe in 1919. A delegate to the pacifist, feminist congress convening in Zurich, Terrell saw it as her duty to sow disorder among all those who would complacently accept peace terms that did not grapple with the global issue of race relations. In Europe in 1919, Terrell divided her time between networking with powerful African and Asian statesmen in Paris, imploring white feminists to recognize racial inequality as an impediment to peace and freedom, and fighting the segregated American military for the right to visit the devastated regions of northern France. Terrell was a powerful spokeswoman for racial justice and women’s equality, but her arguments on behalf of the “darker races” of the world sometimes worked unintentionally to undermine both her feminist and civil rights goals.
Date: 10/20/2019
Primary URL:
https://cerium.umontreal.ca/nouvelles-et-evenements/evenements/une-nouvelle/news/1919-desordre-mondial-world-disorder-47062/Primary URL Description: Conference website.
Conference Name: 1919: World (Dis)order
America once led the push for parental rights. Now it lags behind (Article)Title: America once led the push for parental rights. Now it lags behind
Author: Dorothy Sue Cobble
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: Editorial linking contemporary American calls for paid maternity leave to the international women's rights campaign for the same basic economic rights 100 years ago.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/08/america-once-led-push-parental-rights-now-it-lags-behind/?fbclid=IwAR3hnUaoudLdUomQRKeZNnmLwxqEAH7ChNL9xQqgjEefb3myiee1WWshuB8&utm_term=.7af99e2bcdecPrimary URL Description: The Washington Post's web archive.
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: The Washington Post
The Men Who Made the Peace at Versailles, and the Women Who Tried to Set Them Straight (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The Men Who Made the Peace at Versailles, and the Women Who Tried to Set Them Straight
Abstract: An overview of women's activism at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Date: 05/27/2018
Location: Sacramento Public Library
Primary URL:
https://www.sacramento365.com/event/world-war-revisited-5/Men Alone Prepare the Future’: French and Chinese Feminists at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Men Alone Prepare the Future’: French and Chinese Feminists at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
Abstract: “Women of all countries are painfully impressed by the fact that men alone prepare the future, that not one of them has been summoned to take part in the task of reorganization, and that the international code of which they will have to bear the consequences will have been established entirely without them; once again people will speak in their name and decide for them without consulting them.”
With this protest, issued in March 1919, Western feminists put the peacemakers on notice that women were not going to allow the historic peace negotiations to unfold without them. In the months that followed, thousands of women in Europe and across the globe congregated, spoke out, and took to the streets, claiming the right to help shape a new international order after the First World War.
Paris was the unofficial center of world government in 1919, and some of the most influential female activists of the day converged there. This lecture will focus on two among them: French suffragist Marguerite de Witt Schlumberger and Chinese feminist and nationalist Soumay Tcheng. Both came to Paris to represent women’s interests at the Peace Conference. Both would leave a permanent mark on the terms and outcome of the Versailles Treaty. Schlumberger and Tcheng marked women’s formal entrance on the modern diplomatic stage, even as they gave rise to a truly global movement for women’s rights.
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Date: 10/30/2018
Location: San Francisco State University
Primary URL:
https://lca.sfsu.edu/events/2018-10-30-230000-2018-10-31-003000/818387A Modern Mulan at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: A Modern Mulan at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919
Abstract: A discussion of the remarkable diplomatic career of China's female peace delegate to the 1919 Peace Conference
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Date: 03/18/2019
Location: Cosumnes River College
Primary URL:
https://www.crc.losrios.edu/culture/calendar/node/18795Secondary URL:
https://youtu.be/a7kfzIdObPgThe Women Who Shaped the Peace of 1919: Mary Church Terrell (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: The Women Who Shaped the Peace of 1919: Mary Church Terrell
Abstract: A historical overview of one-time AAUW member Mary Church Terrell's efforts to champion racial justice abroad and at home.
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Date: 04/16/2019
Location: The Lodi chapter of the American Association of University Women
Peacemaking and women's rights... a century in the making (Blog Post)Title: Peacemaking and women's rights... a century in the making
Author: Mona Siegel
Abstract: n the aftermath of WWI global women activists saw a moment to empower women in the peace negotiations and seek a new order, one that was inclusive of women’s rights and where women held a voice in the establishment of a lasting peace. In this article, Mona Siegel draws on her new book Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First World War detailing the stories of women activists, their efforts to champion a different type of peace and how they left their mark on the emerging fundamental principles for democracy and social justice.
Date: 11/18/2019
Primary URL:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/wps/2019/11/18/peacemaking-and-womens-rights-a-century-in-the-making/Blog Title: WPS Blog
Website: Centre for Women, Peace, and Security Blog - The London School of Economics
Courtiser Woodrow Wilson pour obtenir le droit de vote : le combat des féministes françaises en 1917-1918 (Article)Title: Courtiser Woodrow Wilson pour obtenir le droit de vote : le combat des féministes françaises en 1917-1918
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: En 1917-1918, la féministe française Marguerite de Witt Schlumberger a mené une campagne fructueuse pour convaincre le président américain Woodrow Wilson d’appuyer le principe du suffrage féminin mondial. Cet article décrit des efforts des féministes françaises et explique comment elles ont utilisé cette expérience d’avancer des droits politiques des femmes à la Conférence de paix de Paris.
Year: 2018
Primary URL:
https://www.cairn.info/revue-materiaux-pour-l-histoire-de-notre-temps-2018-3.htmFormat: Journal
Periodical Title: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps
Publisher: CAIRN
Global Feminists and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919: A Historical and Teaching Note (Article)Title: Global Feminists and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919: A Historical and Teaching Note
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: This article challenges teachers of world history to incorporate the history of global feminism into their classroom lessons on the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.
Year: 2019
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: World History Bulletin
Publisher: The World History Association
The Forgotten Origins of Paid Family Leave (Article)Title: The Forgotten Origins of Paid Family Leave
Author: Mona L. Siegel
Abstract: In 1919, activists from around the world pressed governments to adopt policies to help working mothers.
Year: 2019
Primary URL:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/opinion/mothers-paid-family-leave.htmlFormat: Newspaper
Publisher: New York Times