The first cross-disciplinary history of women's international thought, analysing leading international thinkers of the twentieth century.

Amid the geopolitical and social turmoil of the 1970s, the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women's Year. The capstone event, a two-week conference in Mexico City, was dubbed by organizers and journalists as "the greatest consciousness-raising event in history." The event drew an all-star cast of characters, including Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, Iranian Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, and US feminist Betty Friedan, as well as a motley array of policymakers, activists, and journalists. International Women's Year, the first book to examine this critical moment in feminist history, starts by exploring how organizers juggled geopolitical rivalries and material constraints amid global political and economic instability. The story then dives into the action in Mexico City, including conflicts over issues ranging from abortion to Zionism. The United Nations provided indispensable infrastructure and support for this encounter, even as it came under fire for its own discriminatory practices. While participants expressed dismay at levels of discord and conflict, Jocelyn Olcott explores how these combative, unanticipated encounters generated the most enduring legacies, including women's networks across the global south, greater attention to the intersectionalities of marginalization, and the arrival of women's micro-credit on the development scene. This watershed moment in transnational feminism, colorfully narrated in International Women's Year, launched a new generation of activist networks that spanned continents, ideologies, and generations.

The chapter Experiencing Male Dominance in Swedish Film Production” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Worlds of Women is a groundbreaking exploration of the "first wave" of the international women's movement, from its late nineteenth-century origins through the Second World War. Making extensive use of archives in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, and France, Leila Rupp examines the histories and accomplishments of three major transnational women's organizations to tell the story of women's struggle to construct a feminist international collective identity. She addresses questions central to the study of women's history--how can women across the world forge bonds, sometimes even through conflict, despite their differences?--and questions central to world history--is internationalism viable and how can its history be written? Rupp focuses on three major organizations that were technically open to all women: the broadly based and cautious International Council of Women, founded in 1888; the feminist International Alliance of Women, originally called the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, founded in 1904; and the vanguard Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which grew out of the International Congress of Women that met at The Hague in 1915. The histories of these organizations, and their stories of cooperation and competition, shed new light on the international women's movement. They also help us to understand the different but connected story of the second wave of international feminism that emerged from the ashes of World War II.

"All scholarship is a collective endeavour, but this book, and the context in which it was completed, has taught us more about the necessities of collective intellectual work, and its material and emotional conditions, than we would have liked. The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown came to our cities just as we completed the first draft of the book, but with a lot more work to do. Even before the coronavirus, we were conscious of the extent to which intellectual labour depends on other forms of labour, often unacknowledged and provided by others"--

Women's International and Comparative Human Rights is a collection of materials that provide information and insight into the complex issues of international human rights and the laws and customs that specifically impact women in countries all over the world. These materials include: excerpted cases, statutes, treaties, newspaper articles, law review articles, books, U.N. treaty organs and committee reports, and cases emanating from regional and international tribunals. By applying an interdisciplinary approach, Professor Tiefenbrun looks into the history of the global human rights movement, the structure of the United Nations and its human rights system, and the relationship of international law to the development of international human rights laws that relate specifically to women. The book examines women's civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights, women's human rights in armed conflict; women's fundamental right to manifest their religion; their right to be free from slavery and sex trafficking; the rights of women with disabilities; and the right of women to be free from institutionalized female infanticide, sex selection abortion, child soldiering, sexual violence and torture. The Appendix contains the major international human rights treaties protecting women and children. This book is a useful and convenient book for courses in international human rights, women and the law, and women's international human rights. "Tiefenbrun (Thomas Jefferson School of Law) successfully guides readers through the volume and presents a very complex subject in a clear manner. This important work argues that the human rights needs of women are not and should not be assumed to be identical to those of men. The author not only provides evidence but also places it in theoretical frameworks, such as feminist theory. Case study comparisons of laws in different countries meld the facts and theories and act as helpful examples. ...This book is an especially useful introduction to the limits of current international and domestic human rights laws for the protection of women." -- CHOICE Magazine, L. E. Lyons, Northwestern University

Using 150 years of women's history, this book details how women have organized into global movements which have shaped and challenged how international organizations consider gender. It argues that traditional ways of analysing international relations have ignored women's contributions because their tools are gender-exclusive. After developing a gender analysis, this book brings to light many contributions from women's movements especially related to the League of Nations and United Nations, and puts these in the context of changes in the global political economy.

This book provides a critical history of influential women in the United Nations and seeks to inspire empowerment with role models from bygone eras. The women whose voices this book presents helped shape UN conventions, declarations, and policies with relevance to the international human rights of women throughout the world today. From the founding of the UN up until the Latin American feminist movements that pushed for gender equality in the UN Charter, and the Security Council Resolutions on the role of women in peace and conflict, the volume reflects on how women delegates from different parts of the world have negotiated and disagreed on human rights issues related to gender within the UN throughout time. In doing so it sheds new light on how these hidden historical narratives enrich theoretical studies in international relations and global agency today. In view of contemporary feminist and postmodern critiques of the origin of human rights, uncovering women’s history of the United Nations from both Southern and Western perspectives allows us to consider questions of feminism and agency in international relations afresh. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners of law, diplomacy, history, and development studies, and brought together by a theoretical commentary by the Editors, Women and the UN will appeal to anyone whose research covers human rights, gender equality, international development, or the history of civil society. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003036708, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Rebecca J. Cook and the contributors to this volume seek to analyze how international human rights law applies specifically to women in various cultures worldwide, and to develop strategies to promote equitable application of human rights law at the international, regional, and domestic levels. Their essays present a compelling mixture of reports and case studies from various regions in the world, combined with scholarly assessments of international law as these rights specifically apply to women.

Offering a wide-ranging selection of case studies, this book evaluates women's political, social and economic involvement in Third World countries. It explores both specific experiences of women as well as common themes such as identity, empowerment and the conflict between tradition and modernity.