The Women's Peace Movement and Feminism in WW I
Korean Minjok Leadership Academy
International Program
Park, Jinyoung
Term Paper, AP European History Class, November 2007
Table of Contents
I. Women's Peace Movement and Political Actions
I.A Women's Positions on the War
I.B The War and Women's Suffrage
II. Women's Effort in Pacifist Movements
II.A Women's Peace Party in the USA
II.B International Conference of Women at The Hague
II.B.1 Short Term and Long Term Resolutions of the Conference
II.C Criticism on Women's Peace Movement
II.D International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace & Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
III. Conclusion
IV. Notes
V. Bibliography
I. Women's Peace Movement and Political Actions
I.A Women's Positions on the War
The early twentieth century was an important era for women, as it consisted of dynamic and conspicuous feminist, suffragist,
and pacifist movements. We often get the impression that the war expedited the domination of feminism, and the feminism
and pacifism are intimately related. But the truth is that not all women supported feminism, and even among feminists quiet
obvious line was divided between pro-war and anti-war positions. For example, both the most conservative anti-feminist
women and feminists like Pankhurst - Emmeline Pankhurst was pro-war while her daughter Sylvia Pankhurst was a pacifist -
supported the war. But, it is also true that women in key positions as administrator in governmental organizations, NGOs, and
political and trade unions as well as many writers were feminists and it can be stated with little doubt that practically all pacifist
women were also feminists (1).
I.B The War and Woman's Suffrage
There is also much controversy on whether the granting of voting rights to women was the outcome of WW I or part of a
progressive movement of Western democracies. Countries such as New Zealand (1893), Australia (1901), Finland (1906) or
Norway (1913) enfranchised women before the war began, whereas others such as Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915), the
Netherlands (1917) or Sweden (1918) gave voting rights to women during the war without being involved in it. In the USA,
President Woodrow Wilson ratified the 19th Amendment to enfranchise women in 1920 as a way of thanking women for
their contributions to the war effort. So did Canada in 1917. In Germany, women got the vote in 1918 by one of reform policies
of Social Democrats in government. In France, not only feminists were mostly pro-war and refused to take part in the Hague
conference but women also got the vote only after WWII in 1945 along with the women in Italy. Jo Vellacot, in her article
Anti-War Suffragists, concludes that in the end, the war had "very slight" effects on women suffrage, and that women
"neither earned it by their war work nor jeopardized it by their wartime opposition.", though it seems evident that women's
pacifist movements were helpful for, at least, the advancement and effective presentation of their political power.
II. Women's Effort in Pacifist Movements
The Peace Movement brought together women from all social classes and all kinds of interests. When the Military Service
Act of 1916 enforced the conscription of men between the ages of 18 to 41 in England, British women pulled all of their
political and emotional might to protest against the conscription. Some reacted by joining the Union of Democratic Control
and the Non-Conscription Fellowship among other organizations. Others like Ottoline Morrell contributed to the movement
by turning their own homes into centers where influential figures like Bertrand Russell developed their pacifist efforts.
II.A Women's Peace Party in the U.S.A.
In the twentieth century, the evident exemplary women's peace organization was the Women's Peace Party (WPP), founded
in January, 1915 by American feminist leaders Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt. In Washington D.C. Jane Addams, a
social reformer, pacifist, founder of Hull House, and the first chairman of the WPP, and Carrie Chapman Catt gathered a
conference of 3000 women to call for peace, the limitation of armaments, nationalization of weapons manufacture, opposition
to militarism in culture and government, and economic sources of conflict. Many pacifists, including Jane Addams, were
attacked as unpatriotic traitors to the American war effort
II.B International Conference of Women at The Hague.
Furthermore, the WPP and Dutch pacifist feminist Aletta Jacobs with the help of German feminists Anita Augspurg and Lida
Gustava Heymann organized an International Conference of Women at the Hague in 1915, three months after WPP's founding,
to call for mediation to protest the killing and destruction of the war raging in Europe. Jane Addams, the chairman of the WPP,
also chaired the conference. Despite the travel problems and government obstacles, 1,136 voting delegates from 150
organizations in 12 countries, both from belligerent and neutral countries (Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark,
Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United States), attended the conference. The participants
were "a quite extraordinary group of gifted, courageous, and altruistic pioneers." (2)
II.B.1 Short Term and Long Term Resolutions of the Conference
The delegates of the conference issued 20 resolutions, some of immediate importance to end the conflict and mediate the
differences and others with long-term aims leading to permanent peace. They called on neutral government to lay pressure
on belligerent countries to stop fighting and negotiate their differences and to continuously suggest mediations through
establishing a conference of neutral states.
Of immediate importance: the delegates called for a conference of women to take place at the same time and same place
while the 'conference of powers' frames the terms of the peace settlement and to submit their practical proposals for a lasting
peace to those power states. They also resolved to send envoys to suggest their proposals in the resolutions of the Congress
to the neutral and belligerent states in Europe and to the president of the USA. Small delegations visited 14 countries during May
and June 1915. Jane Addams also personally met President Wilson to present the resolutions of the conference. According to
the records, Wilson said that the Congress' resolutions were by far the best formation for peace, and even 'borrowed' some
of their ideas for his own proposals he later announced.
Of long-term aims: the delegates called for disarmament, equality between genders and among nations, world-wide institution
providing continuous machinery to mediate international conflicts and prevent wars. They sought the transformation by non-violent
means from 'the culture of militarism and war to a culture of peace and non-violent'.
II.C Criticism of the Women's Peace Movement
However, criticism was not to be ignored. When Jane Addams tried to galvanize US opposition to WW¥°, she was accused
of alienating American public opinion and besmirching the heroism of men dying for 'home, country, and peace itself', even though
she argued that soldiers were also victims of the mechanized war. After the war, she was even stigmatized as a traitor, Communist,
and anarchist. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the US Congress, had to cost her second election because she was a
pacifist who voted against American participation in the First World War.
On international terms, Frederick Delano Roosevelt, yet Colonel Roosevelt and the future President of the United States, called ICW
"both silly and base" and delegates "hysterical pacifists", while Winston Churchill closed the North Sea to shipping, preventing
most British delegates from attending and detaining even the US delegation's ship.
II.D International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace & Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Despite the hardships, International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) was created as a result of the conference,
and WPP became the U.S. section of the ICWPP. As has been resolved at the 1915 Congress, the second International Congress
of Women was held in May 1919 in Zürich, Switzerland while the final terms of Versailles Treat was arranged in Paris. It was
held in Zürich, not in Paris, because the French government refused to permit the German women delegates to enter France.
So, only part of delegates stayed in Versailles to receive the submissions from Zürich and get them to the participants in the
governmental conference. The ICW denounced the Versailles peace treaty as a treaty of revenge of the victors over the defeated,
sowing the seeds of another world war. It criticized the sanctions regime of the Versailles Treaty and sought universal free
trade, arms reductions with parity for all powers, and a world league that represented all people.
The delegates formed Women¡¯s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to garner their will and act more permanently
and chose Jane Addams as the international president and Emily Green Balch as secretary-treasurer to manage its new headquarters
in Geneva, Switzerland. Both Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch received the Nobel Peace Prize, respectively in 1931 and in 1946,
for their global efforts on peace. WILPF's aims and missions were and still are "to bring together women of different political views
and philosophical and religious backgrounds determined to study and make known the causes of war and work for a permanent peace".
(3)
III. Conclusion
Women's political status advanced dramatically in twentieth century, especially around WW I. Before, during, or after the WW I, women
in Europe and the USA were granted their voting rights and through possible political means actively expressed their varied political views,
conservative or liberal, pro-war or anti-war. Especially women's peace movements that craved for peaceful end of WW I and further
permanent peace were noteworthy. In America, feminist leaders Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt founded Women's Peace Party
to call for peace and settlements of ongoing conflicts. Furthermore, women delegates from all over Europe and America convened in the
International Conference of Women at the Hague and issued resolutions suggesting peaceful terms of the peace treaty that would lead to
permanent peace. Delegates at the conference also founded International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace and Women's
International League for Peace and Freedom. Though women's peace movements could not bring significant change or influence on WW I
and its peace treaty, we need to shed our eyes on them for their persistent and unconquerable efforts for permanent peace despite relative
political handicaps. International organizations, brainchild of ICW, still actively operates for global peace, which is often ignored by powers
around the world.
IV. Notes
(1) Duffy, Michael. "Women and WWI : Feminist and Non-Feminist Women :
Between Collaboration and Pacifist Resistance."
(2) Goldstein, Joshua. "The Women of World War I."
(3) Brief History of the Women's International League for Peace
and Freedom.
V. Bibliography
Note : websites quoted below were visited in October 2007.
1. "Brief History of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom." Women's International League.
15 Nov. 2007 http://www.wilpf.int.ch/history/hindex.htm.
2. Duffy, Michael. "Women and WWI: Feminist and Non-Feminist Women: Between Collaboration and Pacifist Resistance."
First World War.Com. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_three.htm.
3. Goldstein, Joshua. "The Women of World War I."
Warandgender.Com. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.warandgender.com/wgwomwwi.htm.
4. Safstrom, Sarah V. "A Proud History of Women Advocating for Peace."
National Organization for Women. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.now.org/nnt/spring-2003/peace.html?printable.
5. "Women's International League for Peace and Freedom."
An Inventory of the Collection At UIC. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/specialcoll/services/rjd/findingaids/WILPFb.html.
6. "Women's International League for Peace and Freedom."
Wikipedia. 15 Nov. 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_International_League_for_Peace_and_Freedom.
7. "Women's Peace Party."
Spartacus. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApeaceW.htm.
8. "Women and the Peace Movement."
National Women's History Museum. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.nwhm.org/ProgressiveEra/peace.html.
9. "So This Then is the Preachment Entitled Chicago Tongue (C1913) the "Illinois Way" of Beautifying the Farm (1914)."
Digitized Book of the Week. Library of the
University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign. 15 Nov. 2007 http://www.library.uiuc.edu/blog/digitizedbotw/2007/06/womens_international_league_fo.html.
10. "Aletta Jacobs." Wikipedia. 20 Nov. 2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aletta_Jacobs.
11. Jacobs, Aletta, and Harriet Feinberg. "Aletta Jacobs." Aletta Jacobs Online. 20 Nov. 2007
http://www.alettajacobs.org/english/.
12. Jacobs, Aletta, and Harriet Feinberg. "Memoirs: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace."
Sunshine for Women. 20 Nov. 2007 http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/jacobs2.html.
13. Jo Vellacot, Anti-War Suffragists (1977), posted on
Enfranchising Women : The Politics of Women's
Suffrage in Europe 1789-1945 at Leeds Trinity & All Saints http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/histcourse/suffrage/document/antiwara.htm