The Challenge of multinational empire for the international women's movement: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/National Politics

TitleThe Challenge of multinational empire for the international women's movement: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Development of Feminist Inter/National Politics
Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsZimmermann, S.
Journal titleJournal of Women's History
Year2005
Pages87 - 117
Volume17
Issue2
Abstract

This article analyzes strategies of transnational organizing as developed in the international women's movement prior to 1918, comparing the International Council of Women (ICW) and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). These organizations developed divergent schemes of dealing with political entities that did not conform to the western notion of the nation state, and with women's movements from these regions. In this context, neither the ICW nor the IWSA overtly challenged constitutional arrangements characterizing the pre-existing, deeply hierarchical international order. Yet in collaborating with organized women from the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, as well as from other dominated nations and regions in European and non-European contexts, the IWSA developed a cautious partisanship for national emancipation and self-determination. The study analyses how ICW and IWSA engaged in constructing the feminist inter/national through a complex set of policies relating women's international representation to state, nation, citizenship, and territory.

Languageeng
Notes

Accession Number: FMH2190992180; Zimmermann, Susan 1; Affiliations: 1: Professor of History, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; Issue Information: V. 17, NO. 2, SUMMER, 2005; pp. 87-117; Note: Publisher Information: Johns Hopkins University Press.; Note: Decade/Century: 189-; Note: Decade/Century: 190-; Note: Decade/Century: 191-; Note: URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal%5fof%5fwomens%5fhistory/v017/17.2zi... Subject Term: 19th century; Subject Term: Austria; Subject Term: Europe; Subject Term: Feminism; Subject Term: History; Subject Term: International cooperation; Subject Term: International Council of Women; Subject Term: International Woman Suffrage Alliance; Subject Term: Women in politics; Subject Term: Women's rights; Subject Term: austrian women; Subject Term: feminist organizations; Subject Term: feminist politics; Subject Term: global feminism; Subject Term: habsburg empire; Subject Term: hungarian women; Subject Term: international council of women [organization]; Subject Term: international woman suffrage alliance [organization]; Subject Term: national identity; Subject Term: organizational development; Subject Term: organizational objectives; Subject Term: political activism; Subject Term: social movements theory; Subject Term: state, the; Subject Term: suffrage movements; Subject Term: transnationalism; Subject Term: women's internationalism; Subject Term: women's organizations; Subject Term: organization; Subject Term: social problems; Subject Term: social movements; Subject Term: europe – austria; Subject Term: europe – hungary; Number of Pages: 31p; Document Type: Article; The article analyzes strategies of transnational organizing as development in the international women's movement prior to 1918. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the emergence of an organized international women's movement with strong North Atlantic roots and pursuing definite strategies designed to globalize feminist internationalism and to propel the movement toward social and political reform on this level. The organized international women's movement was built on the idea that self-governing nation states or federal states formed the main foundation of any organization operating at an international level.

Unit: 
Department of History
Department of Gender Studies