Preliminary Programme

The paper furthers discussions about the significance of religion for the emergence of nineteenth-century women’s activism. Particularly, it aims at revisiting the prevalent views on the role of Protestantism and Catholicism in the development of women’s movements and feminisms in the period under consideration. There is a widespread agreement in the literature that the Catholic religion was a predominantly conservative force that postponed women’s emancipation, as opposed to Protestantism that is believed to have been more conducive to women’s struggle. I will argue that such arguments are informed by a Weberian typology and have significant epistemological consequences for research on Catholic nations/communities/populations. I will propose a redefinition of the research model that juxtaposes Protestant versus Catholic beliefs. The model I approach aims at tackling Polish women’s situation vis-à-vis religion, without (unnecessary) pre-given cultural judgments or religious and cultural stereotypes.

I will provide examples of nineteenth-century Polish female social and political activisms inspired or brought about primarily by the Catholic religion in order to illustrate that Catholicism was a very significant source of Polish women’s empowerment. Relying on phenomena such as the National Mourning, school strikes and rosary circles, I will argue that including religion into research on women in the time of Partitions may offer important insights into female activism instigated “from below” by worker, peasant or petit bourgeois women. Thus, the paper aims at shifting from the common interest of scholars in Polish upper-class female and male actors, who raised issues of women’s suffrage or the “woman question”, toward a focus on women from others social groups and their attempts of challenging traditional roles. Based on these cases, I will argue that religion is an indispensable factor that has to be incorporated in research on Polish women’s activism in the period under consideration. (Show less)

In historiographies of Galicia, the theme of “backwardness” runs through most analyses and explanations. Backwardness has become a sufficient argument in itself that does not require scrutiny -- both in the historiography and in the political projects and social analyses of the time. This is also true for women's movements and politics in Galicia. Comparing the women's movements in all three lands of partitioned Poland, most scholars claim that the nucleus of activities took place in Warsaw, in the Russian partition, where the social situation after the 1863 uprising (such as the displacement of insurgents to Siberia, Russification, etc.) and the embrace of positivism made possible new social movements. The activities in Galicia seemed to be imported from the Russian partition, because the conservative mainstream in Galicia prevented a radical women's movement of its own. So runs the master narrative for the Polish women's movements. When comparing the Polish women's movements to western movements, historians have argued that Polish women were less radical and less feminist (meaning less willing to act independently from men). In a word, it is suggested that in relation to the west, the Polish women’s movement was “backwards.” The main explanation for this is Poland’s Catholicism and the prioritising of national liberation over women’s emancipation.

But there were many "modern" and also feminist activities and arguments in the politics of Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian women. This is particularly visible, I argue, in projects that were defined as "social work". Most political movements in Galicia used the paradigm of "backwardness" to legitimize their work called "praca organiczna (organical work)", "Gegenwartsarbeit" a.s.o. They argued that progress depended on reforming society, which was always defined in ethnic terms as either Polish, Ukrainian, or Jewish. In other words, it was the backwardness of a specific society that legitimated these women’s participation in social activities. This is also true for the women's movements/politics in Galicia. I will suggest in this paper that in order to overcome the "master narrative" of the social and political backwardness of the women's movement, we must analyse the use of the notion of "backwardness" itself – along with "national identity" – as political strategies for a region which is marginalized as peripheral, or in some cases as a border region between modernity and tradition.

Using postcolonial concepts this paper will analyse the social work of Polish women in Galicia - especially those that addressed peasant women. I will consider the work of Maria Wyslouchowa, an activist for the intellectual peasant movement who particularly concentrated on women, and I will compare her work with other initiatives, including Ukrainian and Jewish projects. I will show that a similar framework grounded all of these projects. Further, I suggest that they were formulated in one society – rather than in separate societies defined by ethnic groups – where groups were competing for social positions. The women of these movements were constructing themselves as new - intellectual – elite that offered the power and the concepts to modernize the society. (Show less)

Feminist organisations in Partitioned Poland were structured by two factors: first, by the political order in the different partition areas, and second, by Polish society, broadly understood as a fabric of social and cultural networks. From this perspective, they occupied a highly specific position in the international women's movement. My paper will show the impact of this setting on Polish feminism on the organisational and cultural level. In particular, it examines the feminist women who first participated in debates about the development of the polish society (initiated be the so called Warsaw Positivism). In so doing they "feminised" these debates through the subjects that they introduced and through dissemination. Some of these women then became prototypes and functioned as points of orientation in the emerging culture of the women's movement.
These Polish points of reference will be contrasted with the different social and legal conditions established by the partition power. Together, they made for a great variety of organisational patterns among Polish female organisations.

Thus the paper proposes a critical approach to dominant scholarly writings on the Western women's movements and to the 'Polish society without a state'. It further seeks to describe the specific character of Polish feminism and the methodological complexities inherent in the topic. It will show that the lack of national statehood and the emergence of the Polish inteligencja as the embodiment of Polishness after the suppression of the January Uprising in 1863 led to a specific matrix of gender relations, a matrix that deeply influenced the conditions of women's liberation in the process of Polish state-building and should not be reduced to a late-comer Eastern variation of women's emancipation. Provocatively, the Polish example suggests a reinterpretation of European feminism that transgresses customary boundaries of national history writing. (Show less)