Women of the World: Australian and British Feminist Internationalists, 1919-39

Picture: Collection IAV-Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History

Interwar feminists had no doubt that what they were doing was historically significant. Though conventional wisdom once held that the 1920s and 1930s was a period of decline for feminism, these decades were in fact dynamic ones that saw the growth and diversification of feminist ideas and activism, especially on an international level. Women from around the world collaborated across borders on a range of issues, from economic equality to ideas about global governance, growing in confidence and staking a claim to broader political discussions. At the same time, they responded to critiques made by women outside the movement’s North Atlantic hub, becoming ever-more cognisant of the limits of their own ‘sisterhood’. In this paper I share how I have used transnational and biographical approaches in my PhD research to examine the international women’s movement during this period. Focusing on the lives, ideas, and activities of a group of eight Australian and British interwar feminists, I explore how individual experiences and wider structures such as imperialism coalesced in the production of feminist and internationalist thought. As I show, by reorienting the predominantly transatlantic emphasis of the historiography we can continue building our knowledge of this formative phase in feminism’s history.

Michelle Staff is a PhD candidate in The Australian National University’s School of History. Her research – which uses transnational and biographical approaches – sits in the field of global histories of feminism. Her work has been published in the Journal of Women’s History and Australian Historical Studies, as well as The Conversation and the Australian Book Review. After spending the past few years as part of the Lilith: A Feminist History Journal editorial collective, Michelle has recently joined the new Australian Women’s History Network convenor team.

Join Zoom Meetinghttps://anu.zoom.us/j/89150453744?pwd=RVg5U0xEcTNXTm9rL1pJR1FHaXlBUT09

Meeting ID: 891 5045 3744 Password: 037308

Date & time

Wed 26 Oct 2022, 4.15–5.30pm

Location

RSSS Auditorium, Ground Floor (Level 1), RSSS Building, ANU, 146 Ellery Crescent, Acton, ACT 2601, and Online

Speakers

Michelle Staff

School/Centre

School of History

Contacts

Filip Slaveski

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