Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organisations: the case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612025.2010.502399
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Communism, Protests, Social Movements
ResumoAbstract This article explores Cold War assumptions that have shaped the western historiography of inter/transnational women's organisations, in particular the International Council of Women (ICW), the International Alliance of Women (IAW), and the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). A number of assumptions are discussed—that the western organisations were 'politically neutral', with their feminist identity or agenda taken for granted; secondly, that the ICW and IAW were located 'in the West' and the WIDF 'behind the Iron Curtain', without any interaction between them; and thirdly, that the Congress of American Women (CAW) and its international umbrella organisation, the Women's International Democratic Federation, were deeply politicised, i.e. 'Communist' but not 'feminist'. It is argued that these assumptions have contributed to a one‐sided emphasis on western international women's organisations and to a state of 'not knowing' about the WIDF. In the second part of the article, the WIDF is briefly discussed, with a focus on its early life in war‐ravaged Europe. Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the financial support for my research from the CEU Research Board, the National Humanities Center, NC (which awarded me a John E. Sawyer Fellowship), and the History Department at Stockholm University, where I spent a semester as Guest Professor. For questions and comments on earlier versions of this text I thank my co‐presenters and other participants in the Conference 'International Feminisms in Historical Comparative Perspective, 19th–20th Centuries', Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, 25 February 2008, organised by Anne Cova and Ann Taylor Allen; my co‐panellists at the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women and at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association; those attending a presentation of this text at Indiana University, 29 January 2009; and participants in the 2008–09 Gender Study Group at the National Humanities Center, in particular Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Nancy MacLean. For inspiring conversations and helpful questions I also thank Bonnie G. Smith, Susan Zimmermann, Chiara Bonfiglioli, Wang Zheng, Anne Cova and Ann Taylor Allen. My most profound thanks go to Yana Knopova, whose encouragement and incisive criticism have contributed enormously to this article. Notes [1] A formulation inspired by Florence Dole's book project, 'Not Knowing: forms of privacy in the postwar southern novel'; and Melvyn P. Leffler (1999) The Cold War: what do 'we now know', American Historical Review, 104(2), pp. 501–524. [2] Ellen DuBois has defined 'left feminism' as 'a perspective which fuses a recognition of the systematic oppression of women with an appreciation of other structures of power underlying … society (what we now most often call "the intersections of race, class, and gender"). Therefore [she continues], by left feminism, I also mean an understanding that the attainment of genuine equality for women—all women—requires a radical challenge to … society, the mobilisation of masses of people, and fundamental social change'. Ellen C. DuBois (1991) Eleanor Flexner and the History of American Feminism, Gender & History, 3(1), pp. 81–90, quote on p. 84; condensed on p. 85 to 'a sense of women's systematic oppression with a larger understanding of social inequality'. [3] Wuolijoki's case is not directly related to the two others, but can remind us that anti‐Communism and its consequences for women's history go back to the pre‐1940 period. Margaret McFadden (2006) A Radical Exchange: Rosika Schwimmer, Emma Goldman, Hella Wuolijoki and red–white struggles for women, in Edith Saurer, Margareth Lanzinger & Elisabeth Frysak (Eds) Women's Movements: networks and debates in post‐communist countries in the 19th and the 20th centuries (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Boehlau (L'Homme Schriften, vol. 13), p. 504. [4] On the CAW see Amy Swerdlow (1995) The CAW: left‐feminist peace politics in the Cold War, in Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler‐Harris & Kathryn Kish Sklar (Eds) U.S. History as Women's History: new feminist essays (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press) pp. 296–312; Kate Weigand (2001) Red Feminism: American communism and the making of women's liberation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press); and Gerda Lerner (2002) Fireweed: a political autobiography (Philadelphia: Temple University Press). [5] Amy Swerdlow (1993) Women Strike for Peace: traditional motherhood and radical politics in the 1960s (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press), pp. 39–40; she also mentions this case of not‐knowing in her 'The CAW', pp. 296–297. [6] Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, p. 37. [7] The WIDF's claims about its size are similar to those made by the International Council of Women, which added together all of the women who belonged to the local groups constituting the National Councils, thus for example claiming to represent 36 million women by 1925. For the ICW, see Leila J. Rupp (1997) Worlds of Women: the making of an international women's movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press), p. 15. [8] Scholars in the English‐language world have for some time acknowledged that the initiative for the International Women's Year (IWY) came from the WIDF. See, for example, Nitza Berkovitch (1999) The Emergence and Transformation of the International Women's Movement, in John Boli & George M. Thomas (Eds) Constructing World Culture: international nongovernmental organisations since 1875 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), pp. 119–120; and G. Therborn (2004) Between Sex and Power: family in the world, 1900–2000 (London and New York: Routledge), p. 76. However, Raluca Maria Popa is the first to ask more complex questions about the trajectory and implications of the WIDF proposal for IWY. See Raluca Maria Popa (2009) Translating Equality between Women and Men across Cold War Divides: women activists from Hungary and Romania and the creation of International Women's Year, in Jill Massino & Shana Penn (Eds) Gender Politics and Everyday Life in State Socialist East and Central Europe (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 59–74. [9] As far as I know, English‐language scholarship does not discuss the important fact that the WIDF not only initiated the IWY, but CEDAW as well. One of the earliest published WIDF sources for this is the WIDF journal, Women of the Whole World (1972), 2, p. 3, as mentioned in Popa, 'Translating Equality'. [10] For the notion of an 'overwhelming silence', see Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1988) Under Western Eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses, Feminist Review, 30, pp. 61–88 (p. 64). The WIDF is not mentioned in, for example, Susan Kent (2004) Worlds of Feminism, in Bonnie G. Smith (Ed.) Women's History in Global Perspective, vol. 1 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press), pp. 275–312; Barbara Winslow (2004) Feminist Movements: gender and sexual equality, in Teresa A. Meade & Merry E. Wiesner‐Hanks (Eds) A Companion to Gender History (Malden, Blackwell), pp. 186–205; or Bonnie G. Smith (Ed.) (2008) Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Although my article focuses on western women's history, the silence also holds true for countries in Eastern Europe, though for historically different reasons that I will not go into here. [11] CAW's traumatic ending has been described most impressively by Lerner in Fireweed, ch. 15. Saskia Wieringa (2002), Sexual Politics in Indonesia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), focuses on the WIDF member organisation in Indonesia, Gerwani, which was by 1965 the largest Communist women's organisation in the non‐Communist world. The organisation was destroyed in a campaign of sexual slander orchestrated by the military under General Suharto. In other words, anti‐Communism in other contexts was sometimes extremely violent, and its impact on women's leftist activism worldwide needs to be researched. [12] Lerner, Fireweed, pp. 273–274. [13] Lerner, Fireweed, p. 256 and ch. 15, passim. For Betty Friedan's unacknowledged history of left activism, see Daniel Horowitz (1998) Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: the American Left, the Cold War, and modern feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). [14] In addition to Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace, see Sara Evans (2000) Decade of Discovery: 'The Personal is Political', in Bonnie G. Smith (Ed.) Global Feminisms since 1945 (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 141–163, 143–144 and note 1; Rebecca Solnit, 'Three Who Made a Revolution', The Nation (3 April 2006). [15] Committee on Un‐American Activities, US House of Representatives (1950, 23 October 1949 original release date) Report on the Congress of American Women (Washington: United States Government Printing Office), hereafter abbreviated as HUAC, Report on the CAW. [16] Rupp, Worlds of Women, discusses the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) as one of the three major international women's organisations of the pre‐1940 period, but after 1945 the WIDF had taken over that position. In addition, the WILPF focused on peace, whereas the WIDF was a general women's organisation, and in that sense similar to the ICW and IAW. [17] Rupp, Worlds of Women, p. 15; Marie‐Hélène Lefaucheux (1966) Foreword, in Women in a Changing World: the dynamic story of the International Council of Women since 1888 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). [18] Louise C.A. van Eeghen, The Spirit and Work of the I.C.W. (ICW 1938) pp. 5 and 7 (for the quote) and Louise C.A. van Eeghen, Highlights in the History of the I.C.W. (ICW 1954). [19] Words of its long‐term president, Lady Aberdeen, quoted in Rupp, Worlds of Women, p. 20. This was the ICW's pre‐1940 perspective. I don't think it changed immediately after the war, but when and how the ICW's views developed is part of my work in progress. [20] For the name changes, see the IWSA/IAW's Congress Reports of 1926 and 1946. Rupp, Worlds of Women, p. 15. [21] Gisela Bock (2002), Women in European History, trans. Allison Brown (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell), p. 177, has pointed out that peace, disarmament and gender equality were the international women's movement's main goals in the interwar period. [22] For this, see esp. Carol Miller (1994) 'Geneva—the Key to Equality': inter‐war feminists and the League of Nations, Women's History Review, 3(2), pp. 218–245. [23] I discuss this period in a nutshell in Francisca de Haan (2010) A Brief Survey of Women's Rights, UN Chronicle XLVII(1); http://www.un.org:80/wcm/content/site/chronicle/lang/en/home/archive/issues2010/empoweringwomen/briefsurveywomensrights (2 April 2010). [24] Nina Popova, for example, lost her husband, Dolores Ibárruri her son, Kata Pejnović her husband and three sons. For the latter, see Maja Brkljačič, Pejnović, Kata (1899–1966), in Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova & Anna Loutfi (Eds) (2006) A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th centuries (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press), pp. 420–423. [25] Fédération Démocratique Internationale des Femmes (hereafter FDIF) [1946] Congrès International des Femmes. Compte rendu des travaux du congrès qui s'est tenu à Paris du 26 Novembre au 1er Décembre 1945 (Paris: La Fédération Démocratique Internationale des Femmes). Women's International Democratic Federation (1985) Women's International Democratic Federation. Published for the 40th Anniversary of the Founding of the WIDF (Budapest), pp. 4, 3, and 6. For the 1990 data, Richard J. Staar (1991) Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University), p. 81. [26] Francisca de Haan (2009) Hoffnungen auf eine bessere Welt: Die frühen Jahre der Internationalen Demokratischen Frauenföderation (IDFF/WIDF) (1945–1950), in Gabriele Kämper, Regine Othmer & Carola Sachse (Eds) Gebrochene Utopien. Feministische Studien, 27(2), pp. 241–257. At the time, the ICW, IAW and WIDF had consultative status in category B with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Commissions, including the Commission on the Status of Women. This allowed them to send their representatives, called consultants, to the meetings and to have access to reports and documents. Upon the Commission's approval, they could also address the sessions. In addition to the Yearbook of the United Nations, see Arnold Whittick (1979) Woman into Citizen: the world movement towards the emancipation of women in the twentieth century (London: Athenaeum; Frederick Muller), p. 163; and Hilkka Pietilä (2007) The Unfinished Story of Women and the United Nations (New York, UN Non‐Governmental Liaison Service), p. 16. [27] 'Encore en 1994, au congrès de renaissance de notre Fédération, …' Sylvie Jan (1997) Son action internationale, in Hommage à Marie‐Claude Vaillant‐Couturier (Paris: Fédération Nationale des Déportés et Internés Résistants et Patriotes), p. 32. See their website at http://www.fdim-widf.com.br/ (2 April 2010). [28] Pioneering were Nupur Chaudhuri & Margaret Strobel (Eds) (1992) Western Women and Imperialism: complicity and resistance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), and Antoinette Burton (1994) Burdens of History: British feminists, Indian women, and imperial culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). [29] Karen Offen (2000) European Feminisms 1700–1950: a political history (Stanford: Stanford University Press). [30] See, for example, Robert McMahon (2003) The Cold War: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press); and Odd Arne Westad (2005) The Global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). [31] See, for example, Rana Mitter & Patrick Major (Eds) (2004) Across the Blocks: Cold War cultural and social history (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass). [32] Odd Arne Westad (2000) Introduction to Odd Arne Westad (Ed.) Reviewing the Cold War: approaches, interpretations, theory (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass), pp. 10–11. [33] Helen Laville is one of the few authors whose work is included in mainstream volumes. See, for example, Helen Laville (2003) The Memorial Day Statement: women's organisations in the 'peace offensive', in Giles Scott‐Smith & Hans Krabbendam (Eds) The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960 (London: Frank Cass), pp. 192–210. [34] An early fascinating example of biographical research doing this is Horowitz, Betty Friedan. Another impressive book is David K. Johnson (2004) The Lavender Scare: the Cold War persecution of gays and lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press). See also the recent essays, Helen Laville (2008) A New Era in International Women's Rights? American Women's Associations and the Establishment of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Journal of Women's History, 20(4), pp. 34–56; Jacqueline Castledine (2008) 'In a Solid Bond of Unity': anticolonial feminism in the Cold War Era, ibid., pp. 57–81; Wendy Pojmann (2008) 'Join Us in Rebuilding Italy': women's associations, 1946–1963, ibid., pp. 82–104. [35] On the ICW's and IWSA/IAW's intention to be politically neutral and/or working on a non‐party basis, see Rupp, Worlds of Women, ch. 2. [36] See note 28, and Margot Badran (1995) Feminists, Islam and Nation: gender and the making of modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press), ch. 12; Leila J. Rupp (1996) Challenging Imperialism in International Women's Organisations, 1888–1945, National Women's Studies Association Journal, 8(1), pp. 8–27; and Rupp, Worlds of Women, pp. 75–80. Some of these issues are also discussed in Pernilla Jonsson, Silke Neunsinger & Joan Sangster (Eds) (2007) Crossing Boundaries: women's organising in Europe and the Americas, 1880s–1940s (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet). [37] Els Flour (2005), Survey of a Century and a Half of History, in Eliane Gubin & Leen Van Molle (Eds) Women Changing the World: a history of the International Council of Women (Brussels: Editions Racine), on p. 42 characterises the ICW as 'apolitical'. However, according to Leen Beyers (2005), The ICW and its National Councils, in ibid., pp. 53–54, the ICW aimed to be politically neutral but had a 'pro‐Western' worldview, with which I would agree. [38] Minutes of Board Meetings, The Women's Library (hereafter TWL), IAW Archives, 2/IAW/1/B/1/7, Box 2: 1946 (italics added). [39] Adele Schreiber & Margaret Mathieson (1955) Journey towards Freedom. Written for the Golden Jubilee of the International Alliance of Women (Copenhagen: International Alliance of Women). The word 'Freedom' in the title was highly politicised at the time. Radio Free Europe had a '1955 Crusade for Freedom'. Patrick Wright (2009) Iron Curtain: from stage to Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press; first published 2007), p. 1. [40] See Marthe Gosteli (Ed) (2002) Vergessene Geschichte. Illustrierte Chronik der Frauenbewegung 1914–1963, vol. 2 (Bern: Stämpfli Verlag AG), 821. On Adele Schreiber‐Krieger see further, Ann Taylor Allen (2005) Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe 1890–1970: the maternal dilemma (Basingstoke: Palgrave); and Susanna Hertrampf (2006) 'Zum Wohle der Menschheit': feministisches Denken und Engagement internationaler Aktivistinnen 1945–1975 (Herbolzheim: Centaurus Verlag), pp. 113–117. [41] Schreiber & Mathieson, Journey towards Freedom, pp. v–vi. [42] Jenifer Hart (1997) Corbett Ashby, Dame Margery Irene, in Lord Blake & C.S. Nicholls (Eds) The Dictionary of National Biography 1981–1985, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 98–99. After World War I she 'advise[d] the War Office on some of the problems caused by occupying troops', and 'in 1942 she went on a government propaganda mission to Sweden'. Ibid., p. 99. [43] Margery Corbett Ashby (1996) Memoirs of Dame Margery Corbett Ashby, with additional material by Michael Ashby (Horsted Keynes: M. G. Ashby), pp. 201–202. [44] Letter from Margery Corbett Ashby to her husband (7 April 1947) from the Astoria Hotel in Hamar (Sweden) (italics added). Letters Margery Corbett Ashby 1921–1960, TWL, Archives Margery Corbett Ashby, 7 MCA/A/028, Box FL476. For an example that includes both the ICW and IAW, see: MEMORANDUM ON CLOSER COOPERATION BETWEEN THE ICW AND IAW, Correspondence about discussions on fusion with International Council of Women, 1948–1965. TWL, IAW Archives, 2/IAW/1/F/4, Box 11. [45] Barbara Einhorn (2006) speaks of the 'wall in our heads', see her Citizenship, Civil Society and Gender Mainstreaming: complexities of political transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, in Sirkku K. Hellsten, Anne Maria Holli & Krassimira Daskalova (Eds) Women's Citizenship and Political Rights (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 74. [46] Wright, Iron Curtain, p. 18. [47] Alan Isaacs et al. (Eds) (2001) A Dictionary of World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 312. [48] Larry Wolff (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilisation on the mind of the enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 2. [49] Ibid., pp. 1 and 2. [50] For the term 'political metaphor', see Wright, Iron Curtain, p. 18. [51] For example, Mitter & Major (Eds), Across the Blocks. [52] Wright, Iron Curtain, p. 7. [53] Helen Laville (2002) Cold War Women: the international activities of American women's organisations (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press; distributed in the USA by Palgrave), quote on p. 113. [54] As president of the Union française pour le suffrage des femmes, she was a main figure in the IAW. The 1966 ICW in‐house history Women in a Changing World refers to her as one of the 'leading Councilwomen' (p. 71). Vrouwenbelangen (the journal of the Dutch affiliate in the IAW) (November 1946). FDIF [1946] Congrès International des Femmes, and FDIF Bulletin d'Information no. 6 (Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, July 1946), p. 1. [55] Corbett Ashby, Memoirs of Dame Margery Corbett Ashby, p. 201. [56] Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Dossier Brunschvicg, En Mémoire de Madame C. L. Brunschvicg. [57] Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation, pp. 98–99, for short biography and passim. [58] IAW 1952 Congress Report; Board Minutes IAW, 26–29 May 1953, Copenhagen. TWL, 2/IAW/1/B/1/10, Box 2; Women of the Whole World, 8(68) (June 1953), pp. 14–15; WIDF brochure 1965. Andrea Andreen‐Svedberg papers, Women's History Collections, Gothenburg University Library, Sweden, No. A 49, Box 3. [59] The WIDF received financial support from the Soviet Union through member payments of the Soviet Women's Anti‐Fascist Committee (from 1956 called the Soviet Women's Committee, SWC) and special projects grants. For the latter, see, for example, http://psi.ece.jhu.edu/~kaplan/IRUSS/BUK/GBARC/pdfs/peace/ct219-80.pdf (2 April 2010), a request submitted by the Soviet Women's Committee to the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party for a special foreign currency grant to insure the participation of WIDF women from Asia and Africa in the NGO forum at the 1980 UN women's conference in Copenhagen. That the Soviet Union facilitated this kind of international travel and work, however, does not mean that it 'dominated' the WIDF. The 'fundraising' style of the SWC's request on behalf of WIDF may even be read as a way to use the Soviet system for WIDF purposes, although further research of the financial activities of the SWC on behalf of the Federation is needed to establish that. See further in part 2 of this article the paragraph about the role of Elisabeth Allen and the British delegation in the establishment of the WIDF, which equally challenges the idea of Soviet 'control' of the WIDF. [60] This is discussed by Swerdlow, 'The CAW' and Lerner, Fireweed; both authors also detail the diversity of the CAW membership. [61] Andrea Andreen‐Svedberg Papers, Women's History Collections, Gothenburg University Library, Sweden, No. A 49; Dora Russell papers, International Institute of Social History (IISG), Amsterdam, and her book, Dora Russell (1985) The Tamarisk Tree. Vol. 3, Challenge to the Cold War (London: Virago Press); Jessie Street (2004) Jessie Street: a revised autobiography, ed. Lenore Coltheart (Annandale, NSW: Federation Press Sydney; originally published in 1966 as Truth or Repose). For Street's archive, which I have not seen, see http://nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms2683 (2 April 2010). For Elisabeth Allen see part 2 of this article. [62] HUAC, Report on the CAW, p. 1. [63] For 1954, see UN Document E/SR.763, in Dora Russell papers, IISG, inv. no. 391. I will further explore the reasons why the CAW and WIDF were attacked as they were in my book. HUAC, Report on the CAW. [64] Swerdlow, 'The CAW'; Lerner, Fireweed, ch. 15. [65] Karen Offen, for example, in her European Feminisms, p. 387, argues that in the WIDF '"Feminism"—even its memory—was obliterated', and both there (p. xxviii) and in her recent wonderful anthology, Globalising Feminisms, p. xxviii, writes that in '1953—WIDF raises the women's rights banner', whereas women's rights were absolutely central to the WIDF programme and values from the beginning. Karen Offen (Ed.) (2010) Globalising Feminisms, 1789–1945 (London and New York: Routledge). The temporary foregrounding or prioritising of other issues, which did occur in WIDF policies in the late 1940s and early 1950s, was a consequence of the contemporary Cold War struggle, which was so brutal that the CAW went under. See further, de Haan, 'Hoffnungen auf eine bessere Welt'. [66] Gerda Lerner has described this as follows: 'anything left of center was suspect and defined as "Communist". That word now carried the weight of instant condemnation—it had become the word for deviance and treason. Like the word "Jude" in Nazified Austria it brought instant reprisal without the possibility of discussion or explanation'. Lerner, Fireweed, p. 278. [67] Edward W. Said (1995) Orientalism: western conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin; first published in 1978). Another factor, no doubt, was the longer history of anti‐Communist discourse. [68] Ofelia Schutte cautions western feminism against 'Othering' women whose path to emancipation it may fail to understand or recognise, quoted in Beata Hock (2009) Gendered Artistic Positions and Social Voices: politics, cinema, and the visual arts in state‐socialist and post‐socialist Hungary (Ph.D. thesis, Central European University), p. 25. For criticism of 'the figure of lack' (her term) in scholarship about Eastern Europe, see also Susan Zimmermann (2010) Gender Regime and Gender Struggle in Hungarian State Socialism, Aspasia, 4, p. 18. [69] Mohanty, 'Under Western Eyes', p. 65. The centrality of the notion of western women's 'freedom' to the western self‐perception is one reason why gender was a key issue in the Cold War, when the Soviet Union challenged the idea that the western gender regime was superior. [70] Ibid. Margeret R. Hunt (2010), Women in Eighteenth‐Century Europe (Harlow: Pearson), pp. 2–3, similarly speaks of 'the self‐serving belief that European Christian women were existentially "free" while "Oriental" and Muslim women were imprisoned body and soul behind veils, religion, polygamy and harem walls'. For a brilliant analysis of colonial and contemporary western views of Arab and Muslim women, see Leila Ahmed (1992) Women and Gender in Islam (New Haven: Yale University Press), esp. ch. 8. [71] On feminist orientalism, see further Joyce Zonana (1993) The Sultan and the Slave: feminist orientalism and the structure of Jane Eyre, Signs, 18(3) pp. 592–617. For the IAW and ICW's orientalism, see Rupp, Worlds of Women, pp. 75–80, and Charlotte Weber (2001) Unveiling Scheherazade: feminist orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911–1950, Feminist Studies, 27(1), pp. 125–157. [72] 'COMMUNISTS: a girl who hated cream puffs', Time (20 September 1948). As Robert Levy has pointed out, Ana Pauker was hated as a powerful Communist—'carefully portrayed' as 'an extreme and dogmatic Stalinist who was the key promoter of Soviet‐inspired policies in the early Romanian Communist regime'—a Jew and a woman. 'Yet, as opposed to several [other of the Romanian regime's] leaders, historians seem to have had little doubt of Pauker's submissiveness [to Stalin]'. Robert Levy (2001) Ana Pauker: the rise and fall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press), pp. 2–3. HUAC, Report on the CAW, p. 39. [73] Ibid., p. 10. [74] As Mr Hotchkis said about the WIDF in the UN in 1954; UN Document E/SR.763, in Dora Russell papers, IISG, inv. no. 391. [75] See Jasmina Lukić (2008) Negotiating Identities in the Post‐World(s). Introduction to Forum—Contemporary Women Writers and Intellectuals, Aspasia, 2, pp. 160–168 (p. 165). [76] Kumari Jayawardena (1995) The White Woman's Other Burden: western women and South Asia during British colonial rule (New York and London: Routledge), p. 9. [77] Despite their shared historical roots, feminism and socialism also have a long history of competition and antagonism, which resonates in the ways western feminist historians have perceived 'Communist feminists', a dimension that I cannot discuss here for reasons of space. For one perspective on that complex issue, see Marilyn J. Boxer (2007) Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept of 'Bourgeois Feminism', American Historical Review, 112(1), pp. 131–158. [78] See p. 548 and note 2 above. [79] As also argued in de Haan, 'Hoffnungen auf eine bessere Welt'. [80] Wang Zheng (2005) 'State Feminism'? Gender and Socialist State Formation in Maoist China, Feminist Studies, 31(3), pp. 519–551; as well as Wang Zheng (2009) Revealing Erasures: visual representation of Women of China: 1949–2009, paper presented at University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 17 November 2009; Forum: Is 'Communist Feminism' a Contradictio in Terminis? Aspasia, 1 (2007), pp. 197–246. [81] 'Eugénie Cotton entre à I'UFF', Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Fonds Eugénie Cotton, 1 AP 27. [82] Contre le Fascisme, Pour la Paix et le Bonheur, Réalisons l'Union des Femmes de tous les Pays! Interventions des Déléguées Étrangères au 1er Congrès National de l'Union des Femmes Françaises. Paris, 17–20 Juin 1945. Edité par le Comité d'Initiative International Pour la préparation et l'organisation d'un Congrès International des Femmes. [83] Eugénie Cotton: Mitbegründerin und Präsidentin der Internationalen Demokratischen Frauenföderation Dezember 1945–Juni 1967, Mitbegründerin des Weltfriedensrates und Mitglied seines Präsidiums … (1968) (Berlin: Internationale Demokratische Frauenföderation); Contre le Fascisme, 6: '… et nous avons aidé, à Paris, sans le crier sur les toits …, les étrangèrs qui comptaient sur nous'. Eugénie Cotton (1963) Les Curie (Paris: Seghers—Collection Savants du Monde Entier). [84] It did not have a prominent place in the WIDF sources about its foundation, although it later claimed to have co‐founded the WIDF. For more on the SWC, see Melanie Ilic (2010) Soviet Women, Cultural Exchange and the Women's International Democratic Federation, in Sari Autio‐Sarasmo & Katalin Miklossy (Eds) Reassessing Cold War Europe (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 157–174. [85] Renée Rousseau (1983) Les femmes rouges: Chronique des années Vermeersch (Paris: Albin Michel), p. 48 and further. Contre le Fascisme, pp. 11, 16, and 18. [86] Contre le Fascisme, p. 6. [87] Ibid. Cotton added that a translation of the Charter had appeared in the journal of the Union des Femmes Françaises. International women's organisations active in the League of Nations had strongly disagreed among themselves about the proposal for a bla
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