The Women's Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914-19 (review)

This collection discusses the impact of the FirstWorld War on feminist thought and women's activism in Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Britain, India, Russia and the USA. It takes as its point of departure the potential tension between feminist pacifism and nationalism in a war context. A clear and readable introduction provides a useful overview of the women's movement in the relevant countries, and indicates some of the central questions addressed by contributors, such as women's engagement with dominant views on gender; their attitudes to pacifism and nationalism; their lack of access to mainstream politics; the global effect of the First World War on the condition of women; and the extent of women's real influence. The essays which follow are both diverse and coherent as regards subject matter and approach. Some are thematic, whilst others focus on a single individual organization. The volume succeeds in responding to the call of one of its contributors for a focus on 'seemingly insignificant lives' through collaborative research (p. 35), and offers a nuanced picture of the Great War in general and women's role and contribution in particular. For this book goes beyond the recuperative: whilst it certainly continues the vital task of providing information on and analysis of forgotten women, it seeks also to use gender as a focus to engage with general issues. This is not 'separatist' women's history. The book's particular strengths are the inclusion of literary and cultural source material, in addition to strictly 'historical' evidence; the treatment of the relationships between feminist activism, war and female politicsation, a theme which recurs in various essays; and the exposition of the detail of individual women's activities and the contributions of relatively obscure groups and organizations to the war effort. It provides valuable insights into the unofficial and international nature of women's engagements with politics in a period in which most European women were disenfranchised and therefore placed in an ambivalent relationship to the nations they generally sought to defend, but of which they were not full citizens.