Agenda Setting, the UN, and NGOs: Gender Violence and Reproductive Rights

2. Rallying for Peace and Equal Nationality Rights: Women’s Organizations between 1915 and 1945

2 RALLYING FOR PEACE AND EQUAL NATIONALITY RIGHTS Women’s Organizations between 1915 and 1945 This chapter is devoted to the first wave of the women’s movement. It traces women’s international organizing at the turn of the nineteenth century, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.1 Two of the most prominent issue campaigns will be of particular interest: peace and equal nationality rights. The first evolved around the First International Women’s Congress in The Hague in 1915, which women organized in response to World War I, and the second, spanning the period 1920 to 1935, was aimed at the League of Nations and the PanAmerican conferences. The two campaigns are particularly interesting because they highlight the dynamic interaction between political opportunities and mobilizing structures, on the one hand, and framing processes, on the other. Resulting in the adoption of several international proposals to bring about peace, the First International Women’s Congress highlights women’s entrepreneurial ingenuity as well as the difficulties women encountered when first organizing at the international level. The case of equal nationality rights illustrates the power of radical flank effects, with groups advancing more radical ideas enhancing the influence of those with more moderate ones. In this particular case, the lobbying activities of women throughout the Pan-American conferences strengthened the bargaining power of women in the League 41 of Nations and contributed to the acceptance of their initially contested demands. The First International Women’s Congress, The Hague, 1915, and World Peace Women’s organizations in Western Europe and North America were struggling for women’s right to vote when World War I broke out, placing the issue of peace front and center on their agendas. Drawing on the expertise and the networks of national suffrage movements, women’s organizations responded by organizing their First International Women’s Congress in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1915. The congress was an important symbolic event, bringing together women from both belligerent and neutral countries in the heart of the war. It gave rise to a series of proposals for how to bring about world peace. Nevertheless, taking part in the congress was not without risk, considering that traveling to the conference site was a painstaking, sometimes even life-threatening, endeavor and that women’s engagement in international politics was highly contested. The Problem: World War I The First International Women’s Congress was organized by an international committee comprising twenty-three, primarily European, women. They included Leopoldima Kulka and Olga Misar of Austria; Eugenice Hamer and Marguerite Sarten of Belgium; Thora Daugaard and Clara Tybjerg of Denmark; Anita Augspurg and Lida Gustava Heymann of Germany; Chrystal Macmillan and Kathleen Courtney of Great Britain and Ireland; Vilma Glucklich and Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary; Rose Genoni of Italy; Aletta Jacobs, Hanna Van BiemaHymans , and Mia Boissevain of the Netherlands; Emily Arnesen and Louisa Keilhau of Norway; Anna Kleman and Emma Hansson of Sweden ; and Jane Addams and Fannie Fern Andrews of the United States. The entrepreneurship exhibited by these women was not coincidental. They had already been leaders in the suffrage movements in their own respective countries and, as a result, acquired substantial procedural expertise —which they crucially needed, given the considerable obstacles the organizers encountered in bringing women together at the international level. 42 Chapter 2 To begin with, participants’ travel to The Hague was hampered by the administrative rules and procedures, which governments had adopted to protect their citizens during the war. For example, the British delegation to the congress had difficulties obtaining the newly required passports by the Home Office. “His Majesty’s Government [was] of the opinion that at the present moment there is much inconvenience in holding a large meeting of such political character so close to the seat of the war” (quoted in Wiltsher 1985, 84). It took delegates’ intense lobbying efforts and a series of concessions for the Home Of- fice to finally issue passports to 24 of the 108 delegates who had actually applied for them, only to find out that a new Admiralty Order had been passed closing all shipping across the North Sea for an indefinite period (Wiltsher 1985, 89). This incident was cause for amusement among members of the House of Commons, as Ann Wiltsher writes: “When the Home Secretary reported that he had issued passports to women who represented organisations and well-known sections of thought, ‘smiles changed...