Preliminary Programme

By the end of the nineteenth century for the first time in Belgian history the consciousness of female oppression was translated into a political movement, embodied by nearly fifteen women’s organizations, founded between 1892 and 1914. The history of the forging of this collective identity has thus far almost exclusively been written from a national perspective, whereas at decisive moments in the development of Belgian feminism important transnational political transfers took place. Between the milestone of the ‘Affaire Popelin’ (1888) that triggered feminist organizing and the founding of the first women’s rights association (‘La Ligue belge du droit des femmes’, 1892) a period of national and transnational networking went by. From the Netherlands and France, prominent feminist activists, played a crucial part in the emergence of an organized women’s movement in Belgium. Another example can be found in the first decade of the 20th century, when representatives of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage entered in contact with younger grass-roots feminist groups and thus accelerated the introduction of suffragist claims in a women’s movement that had previously chosen a moderate and gradual strategy regarding the controversial demand of the right to vote.
This paper aims to examine the interaction of transnationalism and national contexts in social movement history, through a case-study of Belgian first wave feminism. We will analyse how cross-national and international transfers helped forge a collective feminist identity and influenced feminist ideologies and practices. The study of the international feminist congresses organized in Brussels (in 1897, 1902 and 1912) and the establishment of affiliations to international women’s organisations (ICW and IWSA), can illuminate how Belgian feminists actively sought, on the one hand, their inclusion in the international feminist movement, and on the other hand, their empowerment at a national level through foreign recognition. (Show less)

In 1899, Hubertine Auclert wrote that “Pour les Français, les vrais nègres ne sont pas les noirs, ce sont les femmes.” Directly addressing the fact that black men possessed the right to vote in French colonies such as Senegal, while white French women remained disenfranchised, Auclert employed strong racial language and imagery to underscore her point: that “civilized” white women lacked the rights and privileges that France gave to “savage” black men. This assertion reflects Auclert’s substantial efforts toward gaining women’s suffrage in France, a project that dovetailed with her deep engagement in matters of gender and empire. For Auclert, women’s rights and status in France and her colonies was tightly interwoven with questions of race and sexuality. Her understanding of race reflected a complex combination of her acceptance of the language of “civilization” and the concomitant belief in cultural evolution, enmeshed with her rejection of the fixity of racial hierarchies. In other words, she considered white Europeans to be more advanced than other races, but saw the potential for relative progress among non-Europeans. Simultaneously, Auclert viewed sexuality and gender through a racialized lens. These ideas formed the basis of her “imperial feminism.” Auclert believed that French feminism, or more specifically her left-wing version of French republican feminism, could emancipate women in both the metropole and the colonies. However, her conceptualization of “emancipation” differed significantly for these two broad groups. Addressing issues including suffrage, polygamy, marriage, fidelity, and prostitution, Auclert developed a dualistic imperial feminism, an activist politics through which she sought French women’s political equality and the ultimate assimilation of "colonized" women into the equitable French republic of the near future. (Show less)

Russian feminism enjoyed a brief but significant political flowering in the early twentieth century, connected with the upheavals of a dying autocracy. Political feminism in Russia arose only after the Tsar was forced by the 1905 Revolution to grant full voting rights to Finnish women and men while granting suffrage only to men in other parts of the Russian Empire. The largest feminist organization, founded in 1905, was the Women’s Equal Rights Union (Soiuz ravnopraviia zhenshchin), with ten thousand women. The Union affiliated with the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA); the older Russian Women’s Society affiliated with the International Council of Women (ICW).

Women from the Russian Empire riveted sister activists at early twentieth century global feminist congresses. From Finnish women who were the first to achieve full suffrage to Russian representatives describing revolution and repression, feminist leaders were fixtures at both IWSA and ICW congresses, spoke at Hyde Park, traveled frequently out of Russia. Almost all feminists came from the newly forming intelligentsia, had at least some college education, and were multilingual, fluent in French, the language of the gentry, and often German and English.

During World War I, some key Russian feminist leaders supported the Hague Congress, although most viewed the war as a way to advance the cause of women’s rights. As wartime conditions deteriorated, Russian women’s celebration of International Women’s Day in Petrograd in 1917 sparked the February Revolution resulting in the overthrow of the Tsar. Women demanded their rights, and soon after, a feminist led demonstration culminated in the Provisional government’s approving female suffrage, and the first free Russian election, in which women fully participated.

The feminist ascendance proved shortlived. The Bolsheviks seized power in October, coopting the feminist agenda, making women’s rights and women’s liberation a cornerstone of their program. Some Russian feminists fled abroad; the majority remained. In exile or in the emerging Soviet Union, they were silent or silenced, unrepresented at subsequent feminist congresses, although at least one leader maintained steady contact with the ICW. Russian feminism was submerged in the USSR by a narrative that emphasized socialist style women’s liberation, comradely relations between the sexes, and international class solidarity. Within the global women’s movement, this narrative gained acceptance. The history of Russian feminist activism and victories were made invisible or inconsequential, to be rediscovered largely after the fall of the USSR. (Show less)