Globalizing Feminisms, 1789–1945
My objective in editing this collection is to provide a comprehensive, thought-provoking, and teachable collection of pathbreaking articles on the comparative history of feminisms around the world prior to 1945. The volume showcases important second- and third-generation findings, emphases, or reinterpretations that rewrite history in significant ways. These articles place the thought and action of feminists at the center of historical analysis. They deepen our knowledge through comparison and contrast. Globalizing Feminisms before 1945 provides a companion volume to Routledge’s Global Feminism after 1945, edited by Bonnie G. Smith, in the series Rewriting History, edited by Jack Censer.
The history of feminisms is, in fact, women’s political history. Women’s pursuit of citizenship in emerging nations provides the unifying theme for the volume. Although women’s suffrage campaigns figure prominently in this collection, it bears repeating that for feminist women, obtaining the vote–and thus decision-making power– within their countries was never the ultimate objective; in democratizing societies, feminists viewed suffrage as the most efficient means for women to realize a multitude of other dramatic, even revolutionary changes in prevailing laws, institutions, ideas, and practices–and promoting equal opportunity in education, law, the workplace and social services. To them, the vote provided a tool for reframing the connections between, and showing the connections among fields as varied as economics, sexuality, war, and peace. For feminists of either sex (and it bears emphasizing that male feminists existed throughout this period in most countries, though the majority were undoubtedly women), theory and practice were intimately intertwined. Their common goal was to that restore a balance of power between the sexes–a balance lacking in male-dominated societies. In fact, they represented a very small cluster of activists operating in hostile environments. Thus, to tell their stories, discourse analysis is not enough; we need to analyze their actions as well, and place both their arguments and campaigns carefully within their immediate historical context–in nearly every case studied here, the rise of sovereign nation-states–that most powerful form of “imagined community.”
Contributors Include:
Padma Anagol, Marilyn J. Boxer, Jacqueline R. DeVries, Ellen Carol DuBois, Louise Edwards, Ellen L. Fleischmann, Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Patricia Grimshaw, Inger Hammar, Nancy Hewitt, Francesca Miller, Barbara Molony, Karen Offen, Florence Rochefort, Leila J. Rupp, Sandra Stanley Holton, Anne Summers, Ann Taylor Allen, Angela Woollacott and Susan Zimmermann.
Last revised: February 19, 2010
Books: Globalizing Feminisms