Women Going Global: Australian and British Feminist Internationalists, 1919-39

Abstract

This study of eight significant Australian and British feminist internationalists harnesses the complex details of individual lives to examine feminist internationalism as it developed over the course of the interwar period. While such stories have often fallen in the trough created by the "waves" metaphor, a growing body of scholarship is currently enriching our understanding of this formative moment in feminism's past. This thesis makes an original intervention into this historiography, turning away from the oft-studied North Atlantic to consider the British Empire and Commonwealth's metropole and periphery in one frame of reference and thus expand existing knowledge of Western feminism. Applying the methods of group biography, it sits at the intersection of social, political, and intellectual history. It draws together a wide range of primary source material from several countries - including individuals' and organisations' archival papers, published reports and pamphlets, feminist periodicals, women's magazines, the general press, memoirs, oral history recordings, and photographic evidence - to explore why these women were committed to internationalism, what it meant to them during its post-1918 ascendancy, and how they developed their ideas and practices.

These varied life stories demonstrate how feminist internationalism became more expansive and assertive as a form of activism, a political practice, and an intellectual tradition during the interwar years. Whereas before the First World War feminists saw internationalism primarily in terms of connecting with like-minded people, from the 1920s they considered it as a means of remodelling the very nature of global society, including its gendered dimensions. My group developed confidence as activists, public political actors, and even experts, staking a claim to wider political discussions and entering traditionally masculine arenas. At the same time, they responded to the critiques advanced by their non-Western "sisters" and took steps to make their networks more diverse, even as they continued to be influenced by imperial logics and realities. The rapid developments of this period, especially the much-anticipated birth of the League of Nations, created the conditions in which feminists could interrogate the boundaries of their movement, tackle a wider range of causes, and assert their newfound political power. As my research reveals, the interwar period was a critical juncture in feminism's longer history, initiating key changes that would shape later decades.