European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (review)

European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History by Karen Offen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000, 554 pp., $60.00 hardcover, $19.95 paper.

In her prologue, Karen Offen contends that "[a]mnesia, not lack of history, is feminism's worst enemy today" (17), and she cites published works by, of, and for women to illustrate the many efforts undertaken on the European continent between 1700 and 1950 to effect the empowerment of women. If feminism is "a comprehensive critical response to the deliberate and systematic subordination of women as a group by men as a group within a given cultural setting" (20), then feminists must "challenge male domination in culture and society, in whatever geographical location or situation in historical time, or in whatever combination with other issues" (24). Given this diversity of circumstances and approaches, it makes sense to speak of feminisms rather than feminism. And because attacks on male hegemony wherever and whenever they occur inevitably involve the relationship of women to the state, feminist struggles cannot be separated from political developments. The subtitle of Offen's study is, significantly, A Political History.

Offen begins her political history of European feminisms with the En-lighten-ment. Although eighteenth-century thinkers debated the "woman question" rather than feminism per se, the intellectual discussions of the era introduced the context, if not the vocabulary, of the European understanding of women's nature and role. Indeed, Offen believes "the debate on the woman question became a central feature of the Enlightenment exploration of human society" (35). Writer after writer pondered the origin and nature of gender identities and relations, critiqued the societal consequences of institutionalized marriage and women's education, and proposed gender-specific contributions to the progress of civilization.

The French Revolution posited additional questions about the gendered meanings of liberty, equality, and fraternity. A 1789 tract, "The Ladies' Request to the National Assembly," called for the abolition of "all the privileges of the male sex," a demand Offen labels "the most radical formulation of feminist claims made during the entire eighteenth century" (55). Such direct challenges to male hegemony raised fears among revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, and contributed to an anti-feminist backlash throughout the European continent. Although Offen, a French historian, first focuses on the French contributions to feminist thought and action, she does not neglect the European-wide context of the Enlightenment and French Revolution. She examines the impact of German philosophy on formulations of the woman question and provides numerous examples of related intellectual, legal, and political developments in Scandinavia and eastern and southern Europe.

Offen links European feminisms with other isms such as abolitionism, socialism, liberalism, industrialism, nationalism, and pacifism. She is particularly critical of the socialist decision to subordinate gender to class interests. "From a feminist perspective," Offen contends, "organized socialism in Europe—and, more broadly, the social-democratic left—has a lot to answer for, not only in terms of stigmatizing and trivializing feminism, or portraying feminists as a 'special interest group,' but also in terms of actively suppressing feminist activists and impulses" (11).

The impact of nationalism upon feminism varied tremendously. In Finland, cultural nationalists struggling for independence from Russia supported women's rights (including unrestricted suffrage) as a means to inculcate patriotism in the next generation. In Germany, Portugal, and Spain, on the other hand, the hostility of right-wing nationalist movements "to feminism [was] deliberate, sustained, and central to their common projects" (311). In the case of Ireland, feminist aspirations in the new Catholic nation were limited by papal rulings on family life and women's work.

Offen's sources illustrate the ways in which politicians manipulated concerns for motherhood to regulate women's sexuality and reproductivity for the benefit of the state. Whereas feminists, such as Ellen Key, focused on women's maternal responsibilities to call for state-supported maternity benefits and to demand "state-subsidized institutional child care for women in the workforce," anti-feminists used...