Women and Social Movements, International

Edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, State University of New York, Binghamton

“Women have created new forms of transnational citizenship—different from the diplomatic or commercial activities that most men have pursued internationally. New access to the historical content in this project will be transformative for scholars and students, allowing us to see, for the first time, that many of the global interactions that shape our world today were first forged by women.”—Kathryn Kish Sklar, from the Introduction

Backed by a global editorial board of 130 leading scholars, Women and Social Movements, International is a landmark collection of primary materials drawn from more than 300 repositories. Assembled and cross-searchable for the first time, these resources illuminate vast areas of modern history. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, Women and Social Movements, International lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life. To the present, women’s international organizations have focused on issues related to peace, poverty, child labor, literacy, disease prevention, and global inequality. Only by exploring traditions of women’s activism can we reach a full understanding of modern society and history.

The collection will contain 150,000 pages at completion, mainly in-copyright and previously unpublished primary sources. The conference proceedings of dozens of women’s organizations form the backbone of the project—from the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London to “Beijing + 15,” which in 2010 reviewed implementation of the 1995 Beijing Platform, and including the Casablanca Dream conference of 2007, which united women from the Global South. Readers will discover how the League of Nations, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Inter-American Commission on Women / Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres, Women’s Africa Committee of the Africa-American Institute, International Council of Jewish Women, and other groups took root, grew, and shaped international history.

About seventy-five percent of the works in Women and Social Movements, International is in copyright, with materials licensed from women’s organizations themselves, leading publishers, and archives. Some 30,000 pages will be unpublished manuscripts and other archival materials, including letters and diaries from some of the most prominent protagonists. Original essays by leading scholars complement the primary sources and provide new frameworks for understanding. Fully integrated into the collection are hundreds of entries from the Dictionary of Women’s International Organizations detailing the historical impact of major international organizations and their leaders.

Associated with the proceedings will be 100,000 pages of journals, manuscripts, letters, photographs, diaries, and ephemera; reports from different national committees (which facilitate comparison and multiple perspectives); and links to twenty thousand additional pages of valuable primary resources on the Web. About seven percent of the materials are in languages other than English.

Women and Social Movements, International provides an unparalleled survey of how women’s struggles against gendered inequalities promoted their engagement with other issues over time and across cultures. Faced with resistance from national political parties and organizations in the 19th and 20th centuries, women created international organizations where they pioneered policies that were adopted by national and international governing bodies. For example, President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points built on resolutions adopted by the Women’s Peace Conference at The Hague in 1915.

The collection lets readers study people whose names are not well known but who are increasingly the focus of contemporary scholarship. For example, Sarah Pugh, best friend of Lucretia Mott, barred from the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention, emerges as a key figure in the international antislavery movement of the 1840s. Dutch feminist Aletta Jacobs promoted women’s equality around the world, 1900-1930. Madeleine Z. Doty, correspondent for Good Housekeeping in Moscow during the Russian Revolution, shaped the policies of the League of Nations in the 1920s. Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic helped launch the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The personal correspondence of these and other international leaders brings a fresh understanding of the world we inherited from them.

Partner Archives

Conferences, Meetings, and Organizations Covered

Publication Details

Women and Social Movements, International is available online to academic, public, and school libraries worldwide via annual subscription or one-time purchase of perpetual rights. For more information, or to request a free trial or price quote, please email sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com.