Preliminary Programme

In the _History of Woman Suffrage_, American women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton dated the beginning of the women’s rights movement in both the U.S. and Great Britain to the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. But few scholars of transnational feminism have examined the convention in any detail. Historians of the American women’s movement see the convention, the setting for the first meeting between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, as a stop on the road to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and thus of significance to U.S. history only. After male abolitionists refused to seat the female delegates from the United States, the _History of Woman Suffrage_ recalled, “Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wended their way arm in arm down Great Queen Street that night, reviewing the exciting scenes of the day…they agreed to hold a woman's rights convention on their return to America, as the men to whom they had just listened had manifested their great need of some education on that question.” Yet significantly, Mott did not mention this scene in her diary, written expressly to document her journey to the British Isles. Using Mott’s diary and reports of the convention’s proceedings, this paper explores the other issues debated at the convention, such as radical religion and free produce, which established important links among American and British reformers. (Show less)

In my paper I focus on a very important, nevertheless completely forgotten force of feminist engagement in the Austrian peace movement from the First World War until her emigration to England in 1939: Olga Misař.
From 1915 onwards, when she was one of the six women from Austria who attended the Women’s Conference for Peace in The Hague, she started to engage in the peace movement. After the War, her activities and interests turned to the Austrian Branch of the „War Resisters“. As the secretary of this branch she, on the one hand, tied transnational bonds and, on the other hand, organized conferences and demonstrations, and published about war resistance. Her activities played an important role on a European level.
My contribution concentrates on her national and transnational social networks and contextualizes her activities with other peace activists/war resisters of the period between the Wars. I also focus on the question, why such an important feminist protagonist of the peace movement had been forgotten and no research has been done on her until very recently. (Show less)

This paper examines how a small group of Armenian, Danish and British women used modern women’s networks, such as those developed as part of the women’s rights movement, and those committed to peace, such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, to lobby the League of Nations to fund and provide humanitarian assistance to Armenian female and child refugees in the Near East after the Great War and the Armenian Genocide. The paper examines Armenian, Danish and British women’s exchanges and activities as transnational efforts to exert women’s influence upon the international body of the League of Nations. The paper investigates the extent to which women were able to influence the League of Nations’ policies and queries whether women’s involvement created “women-friendly” policies towards the Armenian refugees in the Near East. The sources used include documents from the archives of the League of Nations, letters from Armenian, Danish and British organizations, the published reports of the Commission for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East, and testimonies by Armenian refugees. (Show less)

In 1911 - at the Sixth international congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) held in Stockholm, Sweden – a new organisation was initiated by a group of women from the Netherlands. Scandinavian women immediately joined this so called Correspondance Internationale/ International Correspondence/Internationale Korrespondenz. At first the name of the International Woman´s Labour Association had been discussed but dismissed.

The aim of the organisation was to work against the international convention from 1906, forbidding women to work at night because "men and women being born equally free and independent members of the human race, ought to be equally protected by the labour legislation". Thus its general aim was equality in the labour market between men and women. Its secretary was Marie Rutgers-Hoitsema, Amsterdam. She presented the organisation at Le Congrès Féministe International de Bruxelles the following year. According to her this was "la première organisation féministe internationale“. She did not think of IWSA or International Council of Women (she knew well its congresses) as ”feminist”. For her – and several other women activists - equality in the labour market was the very basis for feminism. In 1912 International Correspondence had suborganisations in six states.

My paper will show how some women over many years of debate had reached this standpoint. They were a minority in e g the suffrage movement, but had long roots in earlier international congresses, arranged for women´s emancipation. (Show less)