Women and the Transnational Promise of 1919

FAIN: FT-249262-16

Mona Lesley Siegel
California State University, Sacramento Foundation (Sacramento, CA 95819-2605)

Archival research leading toward completion of a book on feminist activism and peace negotiations at the end of World War I.

Women and the Promise of 1919 will offer the first comprehensive account of feminists’ global efforts to construct a new, gendered political order in the aftermath of World War I. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 generated unprecedented anticipation, as people demanded their leaders deliver justice and democracy to a war-torn world. Largely excluded from the negotiating table by virtue of their sex, women nevertheless met separately, defined their agendas, and took to the streets. From the international feminist and pan-African conferences held in Paris and Zurich, to the meeting of the International Labour Organization in Washington, D.C., to anti-imperial protests in China and Egypt, feminists publicly asserted women’s right and duty to help shape the postwar world. This study will survey and analyze female political activism worldwide during a single, remarkable year, when the geopolitical map and international institutions that we know today were envisioned for the first time.

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