Eugénie Cotton, Pak Chong-ae, and Claudia Jones: Rethinking Transnational Feminism and International Politics

This article sketches the historical field of transnational feminisms and women’s movements as it has developed since the mid-1990s. It outlines the field’s main contributions and shortcomings, identifying as the latter its strong focus on white, Western, liberal, “gender-only” feminism. Subsequently it discusses some of the contributions of the progressive Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF, established in Paris in 1945) and of women and men from Second and Third World countries to the international domain of women’s rights—largely overlooked in mainstream historiography. The article ends by emphasizing the scholarly and political importance of including the WIDF, left feminist leaders such as Eugénie Cotton, Pak Chong-ae (internationally known as Pak-Den-ai), and Claudia Jones, and a broader definition of feminism in our historical research of transnational feminisms and the global women’s movement.