2 hours
Overview
In this fireside chat, we set the context for feminist concerns in international women’s movements, including feminist socialism within the 2ⁿᵈ international in the following ways:
Comparing and contrasting the priorities of the liberal/progressive (bourgeois) movements up to 1914, looking at the socialist critique of bourgeois women’s movements as well as internal discussion of the woman question in German social democracy (Zetkin, Bebel).
Looking at responses to WW1 in the international women’s movements, especially focusing on women who maintained international links during the war. Here we would look at the 5 women’s congresses that took place between 1914 and 1919. The Hague and Berne in 1915, Stockholm in 1917 and Berne and Zurich in 1919.
Women and the revolution. Here we offer a brief history of revolutionary unrest post 1914, concentrating on the revolutionary unrest that led to regime change in Germany, Austria and Hungary and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and German empires after 1918. We outline women’s roles in the revolution and look at the overlap between the ideas and aims of socialist women within party structures, and women working outside these structures who put forward socialist visions for the new world order.
Speaker bios
Their research aims to write revolutionary women into historical accounts and public commemorative activities of the German Revolution and the end of WWI. This research has been used in the production of a 2018 play (Women of Aktion) and a moving exhibition.
