The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) is an international women's rights organization. Established in 1945, it was most active during the Cold War when, according to historian Francisca de Haan, it was "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era".[1] Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its headquarters were moved from Berlin to Paris. In 2002, with the election of Márcia Campos as president, the office relocated to Brasília. Subsequently, in 2007 the WIDF secretariat was located in São Paulo. Since 2016, the president has been Lorena Peña of El Salvador and the world headquarters has been located in San Salvador. The WIDF's magazine, Women of the Whole World, was published in six languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
WIDF was founded in Paris in 1945 as an anti-fascist organization with the intent of engaging women in efforts to prevent war and to combat the racist and sexist ideology of fascist regimes. At its organizing conference, Eugénie Cotton was elected as president and the organization's goals were defined as promoting active participation in the fight against fascism and in favor of world peace, in protecting public health with particular focus on child welfare, in improving the status of women's rights, and in building internationalist friendships among women.
During the Cold War era, WIDF was described in recovered FBI files as Communist-leaning and pro-Soviet. The international day for protection of children, observed since 1950 in many countries as Children's Day on 1 June, was established on the initiative of a WIDF campaign held in 1949. In 1951, the organization was banned by French authorities and relocated to East Berlin. Other international women's organizations became concerned that WIDF would use appeals to rally participation in women's rights and motherhood as propaganda to increase anti-American sentiment and promote communism. At various points in its history, the WIDF enjoyed consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. It was as a result of proposals from WIDF representatives on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that the United Nations declared 1975 as International Women's Year.
History
Background
Eugénie Cotton, 1952
From the beginnings of World War II left-leaning women who were communist, liberal, or socialist were active in the fight against fascism and the spread of the racist and sexist ideology of Nazism.[2] During the war, many of the activists, who were primarily aristocrats and intellectuals, took part in anti-fascist conferences throughout Europe, and began to develop a transnational framework for social and political policies that would prevent future conflicts.[3]Eugénie Cotton attended a meeting of the Union des Femmes Françaises (Union of French Women) in 1944, which sparked the idea for forming the Women International Democratic Federation. Subsequently, she attended a celebration of International Women's Day in London in 1945 where she met with a group of women from Belgium, China, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. Although the war had ended only six months earlier in Europe and was still continuing in Asia, consensus was reached to form an International Initiative Committee and host an international congress to bring left-leaning women together.[4] Sponsors of the event were the Union des Femmes Françaises and the Soviet Women's Anti-Fascist Committee. WIDF's internal sources about its origin are vague in regard to the political affiliations of the founders, focusing instead on their involvement in resistance and anti-fascist movements during and immediately following the war, and their intent to establish an organization which was open to all progressive women.[5]
Founding of the WIDF
The congress was held between 26 and 30 November 1945 at the Palais de la Mutualité in Paris.[6] As a result, 850 delegates from 40 countries, representing 181 women's organizations, attended the founding meeting of the Women's International Democratic Federation.[4] Cotton was elected president of WIDF and served in that capacity until her death in 1967.[7] The organizational goals were defined as promoting active participation in the fight against fascism and in favor of world peace, in protecting public health with particular focus on child welfare, in improving the status of women's rights, and in building internationalist friendships among women.[8] The delegates adopted an International Charter of Women, which aimed at creating global standards protecting women's rights and opportunities as citizens, mothers, and workers.[9] They also had numerous debates about the voting system to be used; the naming of the organization, replacing the original wording using "anti-fascist" with "democratic"; and whether WIDF would have any authority to control member organizations.[10]
After the founding of the WIDF, an intense rivalry developed between the three major international women's groups – the International Alliance of Women, the International Council of Women, and the WIDF.[7] Both the International Alliance of Women and the International Council of Women claimed to be apolitical,[18] but according to historian Francisca de Haan, the leading scholar on the WIDF,[19] they "used imperialist notions of western superiority to support their claims for women's rights".[18] Both organizations condoned colonial and imperial systems and stressed the importance of democracy in achieving fundamental human rights such as freedom of conscience, press, and speech.[18][20] Their members were typically conservative, upper-class, Christian women from Europe, or places such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, where large numbers of Europeans had settled.[21][22][23] After World War I, the International Council of Women and International Alliance of Women actively recruited affiliates in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, but the leadership tended to be from Europe and the United States, the congresses were held primarily in Europe, and the official languages of the groups were English, French, and German.[24]
To resolve women's issues, the International Alliance of Women and the International Council of Women fostered interaction with ruling elites.[23] For example, the International Council of Women and the WILPF,[25] created in 1915 by members of the International Alliance of Women and other elite women's groups,[26][27] approached peace activism by urging heads of nations towards pacifism and avoidance of war through diplomatic channels and improved understanding of cultural differences.[25][28] Fears of red-baiting prevented Western organizations like the WILPF from criticizing colonial systems and exploitation until the 1960s.[27] Publications such as International Alliance of Women member Adele Schreiber-Krieger's Journey towards Freedom (1955) emphasized the role of western women in assisting women from the "third world" in eliminating prevalent customs like child marriage, foot binding, seclusion, veiling, and widow sacrifice, without evaluating how western systems impacted colonized women or crediting women of the Global South or the Eastern world for their own efforts in asserting their agency.[17]
WIDF regarded peace as a prerequisite for fighting against fascism and obtaining rights for women and children.[29] Unlike the pacifist western feminist groups, WIDF members did not see peace as the avoidance or absence of war; rather, they viewed it as the achievement of social justice and the cessation of oppression and exploitation.[28][30] The organization strongly supported decolonization and national independence movements, and was active in the anti-war movement pushing for peace in Africa and Asia.[29] WIDF organized its activities directly with its women members, bypassing government officials. It was typical for the organization to send letters to members urging action and protest over government policies.[31] For example, the organization rallied Frenchwomen to have their sons refuse to participate in colonial wars,[32] and urged American women to protest the use of germ warfare in Korea.[31] Between its congresses, WIDF also organized large conferences to address peace, motherhood, and women's issues.[31][33]
WIDF's membership and leadership included women from throughout the world.[29] Although primarily held in Europe, its conferences were also held in Asia, and Latin America.[34] It was an explicitly anti-racist organization, whose members were working-class.[29] For example, at its founding, the WIDF board established a vice presidency post for a Chinese delegate, which was filled by Cai Chang[b] in 1948.[29] The executive council that year consisted of members from Algeria, Argentina, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, China, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, USSR, and Yugoslavia.[35][c] Egyptian feminist Saiza Nabarawi, who was a vice president of the International Alliance of Women, attended WIDF's 1952 Vienna Congress and was asked by the board of the IAW to choose which organization she preferred. She resigned from the International Alliance of Women's board and became a vice president of WIDF in 1953.[36] WIDF's monthly magazine, which became a quarterly publication in 1966,[37]Women of the Whole World, was produced in six languages – Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish from 1946 to 1990.[38][39][40]
Early activism (1945–1950)
The US affiliate of the WIDF, the Congress of American Women formed in 1946, along the lines of the popular front.[41] Although the Congress of American Women declared itself to be independent of political alliance, the Communist Party publicly endorsed the organization upon its founding.[42] That same year, the Kongres Wanita Indonesia (Indonesian Women's Congress, Kowani) formed and joined the WIDF because of its support for decolonization.[43] WIDF members participated in a fact-finding mission in 1946 through Latin America, visiting Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay,[44] to build networks and learn about the issues women faced there.[32][45] They collected reports from women in India and Algeria to evaluate how the lack of development programs led to poverty and how economic policies and customs systemically exploited agricultural workers.[45] In 1947, WIDF was granted consultative status category B for the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).[37][46] To assess the conditions of women living under British colonial rule in Asia in 1948 another WIDF delegation toured British Burma, British Malaya, and the Dominion of India.[44][47] A similar trip, which was scheduled to evaluate the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, had to be canceled because Dutch and French authorities refused to grant visas to the WIDF members.[44]
The observers compiled their report The Women of Asia and Africa,[48] in preparation for a conference planned for 1948 to be held in Calcutta (now Kolkata), in honor of India's independence from the United Kingdom.[49] The report detailed the need to reach out to rural women, whether they were peasants, owned land, or were refugees; and to confront gendered policies that created inadequate health care, food, and wages for women or subjected them to trafficking and cultural practices that impeded their safety and security.[50] It also focused on informing activists in the West about the issues associated with imperialism, under-development and the violence colonial wars caused for other women.[51]
Immediately following India's independence, its Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru began implementing policies to silence dissent, imprisoning or driving activists and communists underground.[52] Neither land reforms to protect peasants and rural women nor changes to hiring and wage systems to produce job and income stability were implemented.[53] WIDF activists recognized that there was no difference between the struggle against colonial administrations or newly created governments, meaning that their demands for a realignment of power hierarchies to include working- and middle-class women would not be supported.[54] To that end, the conference was rescheduled to be held in 1949 in Peiking (now Beijing).[49] It was the first anti-imperialist and pan-Asian[d] women's conference bringing together women from Africa and Asia.[55] That year, WIDF also led a campaign to establish Children's Day, an international day dedicated to protection of children, as an annual observance on 1 June.[56][e]
The United States had not endorsed a policy of containing communism until after the communists came to power in 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War. US focus was on Europe,[57] and specifically the Soviet actions in Berlin. Thoughts by both superpowers that China would become a Soviet ally caused the cold war to heat up.[58] The Congress of American Women was targeted by the Committee on Un-American Activities of the United States House of Representatives (HUAC) in 1949 due to the support it had been given by the Communist Party.[59] The committee described WIDF as being a communist front using feminism as a guise to lure women to join the organization[60] and concluded that the organization was a wing of Soviet propaganda mechanisms which used a peace campaign to promote disarmament and foster the communist take-over of democratic nations.[61] The Indonesian group Kowani withdrew from WIDF in 1949 because of objections by some of its affiliates to the organization's ties to socialism, but the following year, another Indonesian organization, Gerwis (later renamed Gerwani), affiliated with WIDF.[62] The Congress of American Women disbanded in 1950 because of the negative reactions to the HUAC report.[27]
Women United for United Nations, a group of 30 women's organizations established in 1947 to disseminate information about the activities of the UN, prepared a critique of the WIDF report, which the Department of State widely disseminated through Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe.[73] Women United also sent their report to women's organizations and major newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post.[74] Delegation members thereafter faced arrest and interrogation for treason upon returning home.[73] Several of the WIDF delegates were terminated from their workplaces and imprisoned, but none waivered in their belief that the report was factual.[75] Rodríguez and another Cuban WIDF activist, Edith García Buchaca, led a campaign advocating prevention of Cuban troops from participating in the war[69] and were successful in changing public opinion, which had previously favored Cuban participation.[76] The United States, with support from Britain, led a successful crusade in 1954[77] to strip WIDF of its consultative status for the United Nations, largely because of its anti-colonial work and exposé on Korea.[78][79]
French authorities banned WIDF in 1951 after its activists launched a campaign against French aggression in Vietnam and urged French women to refuse to allow their sons to participate in the war.[32][78] The organization relocated to East Berlin[80] where it began to strengthen its ties to the Soviet Union.[32] Held in 1953 in Copenhagen, the third congress attracted 613 delegates from 67 countries. Among the nearly 2,000 attendants were over 1,300 guests and observers.[33][h] The Indonesian delegation, led by Soerastri Karma Trimurti and a number of other members of Gerwani, included women from the Minahasa Women's Union, Wanita Democrat (Democratic Women) and Wanita Rakyat (Women of the People) organizations.[81] The focus of the congress was fostering peace in light of on-going conflicts like the Korean War and the war to end French rule in Vietnam.[82] Resolutions were adopted at the congress to support an immediate end to both wars and to publish a Declaration on the Rights of Women. The declaration included provisions for the right to work, maternity leave, and equal pay for women; creation of child care and kindergarten centers for working women; protection of the civil and educational rights of women and children; support for women's suffrage and the right to political representation; equal rights with men in owning property and protecting peasant women's land ownership; and the right for women to freely associate and participate in organizations.[83]
Throughout the following decades, WIDF continued to host world-wide conferences, including the 1952 Conference in Defense of Children held in Vienna, the 1955 World Congress of Mothers hosted in Lausanne,[34] 1959 Women of Latin America Conference held in Santiago, Chile,[34][84] the 1960 Copenhagen celebration of WIDF's 50th anniversary, and the 1961 Afro-Asian Women's Conference of Cairo.[34][85] The organization published documents, such as Pour la defense des droits de la personne humaine (For the Defense of Human Rights), to reiterate their position that human rights included women's rights.[86] The WIDF would not be readmitted as a consultant body to the United Nations until 1967,[79] when newly independent former colonies pressed for a restoration of its status.[77] In 1969, US-USSR relations entered a period of détente,[87][88] and that year, WIDF was elevated to Consultative Status A.[77] The improvement in relationships, between the United States, USSR, and resumption of US relations with China in 1972, allowed nations in the Global South, which had become the majority of members of the United Nations, to assert their power and oppose policies of the superpowers,[88] leading to a broader focus on women's issues by the organization.[89][90]
Hertta Kuusinen, 1958
At the WIDF council meeting in East Berlin in 1971, preliminary discussions took place about hosting a year for women.[91] The Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement hosted the WIDF council meeting in Sofia in 1972 and first proposed the idea of a UN-sponsored international women's conference for 1975.[92] WIDF activists Shahnaz Alami[fa] (Iran) and Hertta Kuusinen (Finland) promoted the idea within the Commission on the Status of Women.[93][94] WIDF members of the Magyar Nők Országos Tanácsa (National Council of Hungarian Women) and Consiliu Național al Femeilor Române (National Council of Romanian Women) promoted the idea in Women of the Whole World.[94] When the WIDF raised the suggestion for International Women's Year to the Commission on the Status of Women, it did not gain traction because of WIDF's observer status. Undeterred, the WIDF drafted a proposal,[95] which was presented to the commission by Romanian official representative Florica Andrei,[96][97] a member of the National Council of Romanian Women, a WIDF affiliate.[98][99] After the proposal was seconded by Helvi Sipilä, the Finnish representative of the commission,[91] it was passed by the commission and presented to the UN General Assembly, which adopted a resolution in December 1972 to honor women with International Women's Year in 1975; however, it did not approve hosting a conference.[97][100]
WIDF activists made their own plans to host their organization's 30th anniversary congress in East Berlin in October 1975.[101]Patricia Hutar, a US representative to the Commission on the Status of Women, suggested that the commission revisit the idea of a conference in 1974 to avoid the appearance that only communist women were supporting the initiative.[102][103] The UN General Assembly approved hosting what would be the World Conference on Women of July 1975 in Mexico City, but authorized no funds for the event.[102] Individuals and affiliated organizations of the WIDF participated in both the UN Conference and the WIDF Congress.[104][105] The Mexico City Conference spawned the United Nations Decade for Women, establishing calls to draft the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and host follow-up World Conferences on Women in 1980 and 1985.[93] WIDF members were involved in both of the conferences and the proposal for CEDAW.[77] The WIDF Congress was attended by women from 43 African nations, 33 Asian countries, 29 European states; the remaining 33 countries were represented by delegates from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.[101]
Freda Brown (center) in East Germany, 1987
In 1976, the WIDF sponsored an international conference in Sofia, Women in Agriculture, focused on educational training and developing cooperative farms in the Global South.[106] The organization co-initiated the drive for UNESCO to recognize 1979 as the International Year of the Child.[107] In 1980, the WIDF worked to establish a second United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) center in Sofia to focus on training women from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East[108] for leadership positions in the socio-political-economic fight for their rights.[109] The WIDF also established similar development courses for Latin American women which were hosted at a facility in Havana.[110] These courses continued through 1985, leading up to the UN's Third World Conference on the status of women, known as the Nairobi Conference.[111][i] WIDF activists also visited the war-torn Palestinian territories and Western Sahara. According to Regina Marques, a member of the WIDF board of directors in 2021, the organization was honored as a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 1986 by Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations.[84]
Reorganization and current status (1991–present)
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the WIDF headquarters moved from Berlin to Paris.[112][113] The federation was reorganized in 1994 under the leadership of Sylvie Jan.[114][115] At the 1995 World Conference on Women, many WIDF activists from Eastern Europe explained that their organizations had been dissolved and their voices had been silenced.[116] In 2002, when Brazilian member Márcia Campos was elected president, the office relocated to Brasília,[113][117] and in 2007 the WIDF's secretariat was located in São Paulo.[118] Campos was succeeded by Salvadoran Lorena Peña after her election at the 2016 WIDF Congress of Bogotá,[119] and the worldwide headquarters moved to the Palomo neighborhood of San Salvador at 23 Calle Poniente & Avenida Las Victorias #123.[120] Peña continued to lead the organization in 2023.[121]
Multilingual names
The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) has a number of non-English names, including:
Federação Democrática Internacional de Mulheres (FDIM)[84]
Fédération démocratique internationale des femmes (FDIF)[122]
Federación Democratica Internacional de Mujeres (FDIM)[122]
Internationale Demokratische Frauenföderation (IDFF)[122]
Mezdunarodnaja Demokraticeskaja Federacija Zenscin (MDFŽ)[122]
Scholarly perception of the organization
Stamp marking the fourth Congress of the WIDF (French acronym FDIF used here), 1958
According to de Haan, Cold War policies and investigations and repercussions from the investigations of McCarthyism had long-lasting effects on knowledge about the WIDF and international women's interactions after World War II.[123] Although it was inaugurated in Paris, the WIDF was described by 20th-century scholars as originating behind the Iron Curtain.[124] Cold War stereotypes impacted the legacy of the organization, effectively erasing it from the history of international women's movements.[43][125] When the WIDF was described by scholars or activists, it was depicted as a pro-Soviet, communist front organization, which received both political and financial support from the USSR.[126][127][128] Some of these accounts were based on recovered records of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.[129] Because the official stance of communism was to view feminism as a "bourgeois ideology promoted by upper-class women seeking to advance their own interests at the expense of class solidarity",[130] the perception of the WIDF was that it was not a women's rights organization but rather an organization designed to spread socialist ideology.[31] Historian Celia Donert states that the activists of the WIDF were involved in developing transnational socialist networks and that the political context of party and state ideology impacted how they advocated for women's interests, but that they were focused on resolving women's issues.[131]
Focus by scholars on the social and cultural history of the Cold War[18] and increased feminist scholarship on communist women's activism since the dissolution of the Soviet Union[123] have led to a clearer understanding that women's international relationships were more complex and diverse than previously acknowledged.[132] The full history of the WIDF is difficult to ascertain, as there are only partial organizational records from Berlin. Chinese records are not widely available to academics and many records appear to have been lost.[133] De Haan stated that records of the early organization in France remain in private hands; some materials were destroyed, and others moved multiple times.[134]
Scholars of the 21st century have subsequently described the WIDF as an active feminist organization advocating for women's rights,[19][135][136] and not merely a communist attempt to manipulate women.[137] The WIDF, according to academics like Elisabeth Armstrong and Suzy Kim, played an important role in supporting women's anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.[27][138] In examining the WIDF's role in the peace movement, Suzy Kim refuted that feminism and pacifism declined during the 1950s, stating that WIDF activists launched their campaign for women's rights and global peace during the Cold War with their anti-war campaign against the conflict in Korea.[139] She also concluded that long before second-wave feminists began promoting intersectional analysis, the WIDF incorporated the principles of evaluating overlapping factors such as class, gender, race, and religion to determine how inequalities were perpetuated globally.[140]
Scholar Taewoo Kim made a study of the Korean commission and its report, stating that declassification of military documents and research by South Korean academics, have confirmed that the conditions described by the WIDF commission were true.[141] Omissions in the WIDF report that some of the atrocities committed resulted from the activities of Korean right-wing youth groups[142] were possibly due, according to Kim, to reliance on North Korean interpreters and government manipulation of some of the witnesses.[143] Kim also found the WIDF report significant in that it reveals and documents sexual violence against women during the war.[144] De Haan called the WIDF "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era",[1] an assessment which was seconded by Taewoo Kim.[145]
8th, 1981, 8–13 October, Prague – President Freda Brown (Australia).[146]
9th, 1987, 23–27 June, Moscow – President Freda Brown (Australia).[146] Brown's presidency ended in 1991.[151]
10th, 1991, 30–31 March – 1 April, Sheffield, UK – President Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim (Sudan).[146] Ibrahim was succeeded in 1994 by Sylvie Jan of France.[114]
16th, 2016, 15–18 September, Bogotá, Colombia – President Márcia Campos (Brazil).[157][158] During the congress, Salvadoran politician Lorena Peña was elected president and installed.[119]
17th, 2022, 25–30 April, Caracas, Venezuela – President Lorena Peña (El Salvador).[159]
Commission to Asia and Africa (December 1948). The Women of Asia and Africa: Documents (Report). Budapest, Hungary: Women's International Democratic Federation.
Commission for the Investigation of War Atrocities in Korea (1951). We Accuse!: Korea (Report). Berlin, East Germany: Women's International Democratic Federation. (Chinese version)
↑ Cai Chang: In documents of the WIDF, Cai's name typically appears as Tsai Tchang, or Tsai Chang in Asian name order.(de Haan (2012a) p. 11) (Joliot-Curie (1949) pp. 553–555)
↑ Council Members in 1948 included: Alice Sportisse (Algeria); Fanny Edelman and Margarita de Ponce (named as Margarita Ponce) (Argentina); Tsola Dragoycheva (named as Tzola Dragaitcheva) and Vera Natcheva[bg] (Bulgaria); Anežka Hodinová (named as Anezka Hodinova) and Lenka Lehká (named as Lenka Lehka) (Czechoslovakia); He Xiangning (named as Ho Shiang Ming), Li Dequan (named as Lee Teh Chu En), Lu Tsui, Deng Yingchao (named as Teng Ying-Chao), Cai Chang (named as Tsai Chang) (China); Helvi Laine and Anna Nevolainen (Finland); Éliane Brault, Eugénie Cotton, Marie Couette, Françoise Leclercq, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Jeanette Vermeersh (France); Roula Koukoulou[el] and Evdokia "Vera" Nikolovska-Foteva (named as Vera Nicolefska) (Greece); Magda Jóború[hu] and Boris Fai (Hungary); Sarah Abraham and Manikuntala Sen (India); Elena Caporazo, Rosa Fazio Longo[it], Teresa Noce, and Maddalina Rossi (Italy); Den Ai Pak and Yu Yen-Dun (Korea); Mimi Sverdrup Lunden (Norway); Izolda Kowalska[pl], Edwarda Orłowska, Eugenia Pragierowa (named as Eugenie Pragierova), Irena Sztachelska (Poland); Constanța Crăciun (named as Constantza Craciun) and Florina Mezincescu (named as Florida Mezincescu) (Romania); Dolores Ibárruri and Elisa Úriz[es] (Spain); Andrea Andreen and Valborg Svensson (Sweden); Claire Bächlin and Charlotte Muret (Switzerland); Muriel Draper, Helen Phillips, Frances Smith, Jeannette Turner, Agnes Vukcevich, and Gene Weltfish (United States); Zinaida Gagarina, Zinaida Gourina, Lidia Petrova Kornelenko, Nadezhda Parfenova[ru] (named as Nadiejda Parfenova), and Nina Popova (USSR); and Olga Milošević (named as Olga Milochevitch), Mitra Mitrović (named as Mitra Mitrovitch) (Yugoslavia).(Joliot-Curie (1949) pp. 553–555)
↑ Asian: In the immediate period after the war, and with the creation of Israel and its impact on Palestine, the Middle East and North Africa region was considered Asian and the pan-Arab women's movement was treated as part of the Asian women's network.(Armstrong (2016) p. 306)
↑ Childrens day: Journalist Susan Cooke and other sources have indicated that the date was established at a WIDF Congress held in Moscow in 1949.(Cook:2015) According to de Haan, the second congress of WIDF occurred in Budapest in 1948 and the third congress was hosted in Copenhagen in 1953.(de Haan:2012a p.16) A conference was held in Beijing in 1949,(Armstrong:2023 p. 60) and the WIDF council held a meeting in Moscow in 1949.(WIDF:1949) De Haan confirms WIDF's efforts took place in 1949 citing a 40th anniversary publication(de Haan (2012a) pp. 14, 17) and WIDF documents as early as their 10th anniversary publication in 1955 confirmed the initiative.(WIDF (1955) p. 33)
↑ Evaluating Korea: twelve members were from Europe, representing Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Denmark (2 delegates), East Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the USSR, and West Germany; four delegates came from Asia, on behalf of the People's Republic of China (3 delegates) and Vietnam; three delegates were from the Americas, representing Argentina, Canada, and Cuba; and two delegates came from Africa, acting for Algeria and Tunisia.(Kim (2020) p. 88) Only six were from communist countries and the group included women with liberal and conservative political views, as well as differing ages, religions, and cultural and social backgrounds.(Kim (2020) pp. 88–89)
↑ Executive Council Members in 1953 included: Baya Allaouchiche and Abassia Fodil (Algeria), Fanny Edelman and Margarita de Ponce (Argentina); Branca Fialho and Arcelina Mochel Goto (Brazil); Monica Felton (Britain); Tzola Dragoitcheva and Vera Natcheva (Bulgaria); Li Dequan (named as Li Teh Chuan), Lu Tsui, Cai Chang (named as Tsai Chang), Tsao Meng Chuan, Deng Yingchao (named as Teng Ying Chao), and Yang Yun-Yu (China); Edith García Buchaca and Candelaria Rodríguez (Cuba); Irena Ďurišová[sk] (named as Irena Durisova) and Anežka Hodinová-Spurná (Czechoslovakia); Ruth Hermann[da] and Alvilda Larsen[da] (Denmark); Saiza Nabarawi (named as Ceza Nabaraoui) (Egypt); Sylvi-Kyllikki Kilpi (named as Silvi Killikki Kilpi) and Irma Torvi[fi] (Finland); Eugénie Cotton, Juliette Dubois[fr], Gisèle Joannès[fr], Françoise Leclercq, Andrée Marty-Capgras[fr], and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier (France); Edith Baumann, Helga Dickel[de], Ilse Thiele, Marie Tauberth[de] (named as Marie Taubert), Lilly Wächter (Germany); Roza Imvrioti[el] (named as Rosa Imvrioti) and Roula Koukoulou (Greece); Erzsébet Andics, Edith Erdei, and Erzsébet Metzker Vass (named as Elizabeth Vass) (Hungary); Renu Chakravartty and Bibi Sakuntala (India); Maryam Firouz (named as Miriam Firouz) and Jamileh Sadighi (named as Djamile Sadighi) (Iran); Ada Alessandrini[it], Elena Caporaso[it], Rosa Fazio Longo[it] (named as Rosetta Longo), Rita Montagnana, Angiola Minella, Teresa Noce, and Maria Maddelena Rossi (Italy); Lemach Norcine and Sonomyn Udval (named as Udval Sonomen) (Mongolia); Ransome Kuti (Nigeria); Gudrun Eivindson and Sigrid Nærup Gunderud (named as Sigrid Narup Gunderud) (Norway); Wanda Jakubowska (named as Vanda Jakubovska), Jatazkuvna Mehalina, Alicja Musiałowa-Afanasjew (named as Alicia Musialova), and Eugenia Pragierowa (named as Eugenie Praguierova) (Poland); Stella Enescu and Dida Mihalcea (Romania); Dolores Ibárruri and Elisa Úriz (Spain); Andrea Andreen and Elisabeth Tamm (Sweden); Lotte Hümbelin and Charlotte Muret (Switzerland); Zinaida Gagarina, Galina Gorochkova, Nadezhda Parfenova (named as Nadejda Parfienova), Lidia Petrova, and Nina Popova (USSR); and Vera Luitch and Bosiljka Marijanović (named as Bosilka Marianovitch) (Yugoslavia).(WIDF (1953) pp. 264-265)
↑ Nairobi Conference: refers to the United Nations Third World Conference on the status of women, also known as The World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women, as the World Conference on Women, 1985 and as Nairobi 1985. It was held from 15 to 26 July 1985 in Nairobi, Kenya. The goal of the conference was to appraise the achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women (1976–1985). A final document, the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, was produced.(UN (2023))
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Deng Yingchao was the Chairwoman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1983 to 1988, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and the wife of the first Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai.
The National Union of Sahrawi Women is the women's wing of the Polisario Front. It was created in 1974, and claims to have 10,000 members, divided between the Sahrawi refugee camps, the Liberated territories, the Moroccan-occupied part of Western Sahara and the Sahrawi diaspora.
The Luisa Amanda Espinoza Association of Nicaraguan Women was initially established in 1977 under the name Association of Women Concerned about National Crisis. AMPRONAC was part of the Sandinista (FSLN) network which was set on bringing down the Anastasio Somoza Debayle regime in 1979. Shortly after the fall of Somoza, AMPRONAC change its name to AMNLAE, after Luisa Amanda Espinoza, the first women to die in the war against Somoza, but remained closely connected to the FSLN as their slogan suggests: "No revolution without women's emancipation: no emancipation without revolution."
International Women's Year (IWY) was the name given to 1975 by the United Nations. Since that year March 8 has been celebrated as International Women's Day, and the United Nations Decade for Women, from 1976 to 1985, was also established.
International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) is an international organization of left-wing and progressive jurists' associations with sections and members in 50 countries and territories. Along with facilitating contact and exchange of views between and among lawyers and lawyers' associations of all countries, the IADL works to conduct research on legal issues affecting human, political and economic rights, organizes international commissions of enquiry and conferences on legal and judicial concerns, and takes part in international legal observer missions. Through its activities the Association works as a recognized consultative organization with the United Nations through ECOSOC, UNESCO and UNICEF.
The Primer Congreso Interamericano de Mujeres was a feminist meeting held from 21 to 27 August 1947 in Guatemala City, Guatemala. It was called together by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and hosted by the Unión Democrática de Mujeres of Guatemala. This organization had been formed by Angelina Acuña de Castañeda, Berta Corleto, Elisa Hall de Asturias, Gloria Menéndez Mina de Padilla, Rosa de Mora, Irene de Peyré, and Graciela Quan immediately following the Guatemalan 1944 coup d'état to push for recognition of women's civil rights.
Pak Chong-ae, also known as Pak Den-ai, was a North Korean politician.
The Brazilian Women's Federation or Women's Federation of Brazil was a women's organization in Brazil active between 1949 and 1957. Like several other 'leftist feminist' projects of the 1930s and 1940s in Brazil, the Federation had strong associations with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).
Umi Sardjono was a prominent Indonesian activist who fought for the independence of the country and supported women's rights. She was involved in the anti-fascist and anti-war movements from the 1940s to the 1960s. As a resistance fighter during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, she and her husband operated a food stall which served as a message center for the underground. Captured in 1944, the couple were imprisoned until the surrender of Japan. On gaining release, they worked in the independence movement hoping to free Indonesia from Dutch rule.
Nora Rodd was a Canadian peace activist, feminist, and communist. In 1951, she led a delegation from the Women's International Democratic Federation, investigating war crimes in Korea.
Teresa "Trees" Sunito Heyligers, sometimes written as Soenito Heyligers (1915–2003) was a Dutch lawyer and activist. She was the wife of Indonesian activist Raden Mas Djojowirono Sunito and an active member of the Dutch Women's Movement and the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). She traveled to Korea with the WIDF in 1951 to report on the results of the war. After her husband's arrest the following year, Heyligers moved to Indonesia, where she worked as a translator and served as a defense lawyer for Njono, a leader of the Communist Party of Indonesia, in his 1966 trial.
Women United for United Nations (WUUN) was an organisation established in January 1947 that worked to increase public awareness of and interest in the relatively newly formed United Nations (U.N.).
Lilly Wächter was a German Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) politician and official of the Democratic Women's Federation of Germany. In 1952, she was arrested and prosecuted for sedition in Allied-occupied Germany by US forces; fined and imprisoned, but exonerated on appeal.
Nina Vasilyevna Popova was a Soviet civil servant and women's rights activist. Orphaned at the age of twelve, she lived for two years in an orphanage before being reunited with her brother. She did not complete her secondary education because she needed to work. After training youth for the pioneer movement, she moved to Tambov, where she attended the Soviet Party School, after which she taught trade union officials and worked in the regional museum. She was sent to Leningrad to continue her education in 1930, but left after one year to join her husband who was studying in Moscow. After completing studies at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History in 1934, she became a vice rector at the Moscow Marxist–Leninist University for Science, Technology, and Engineering Workers.
Abassia Fodil was an Algerian regional secretary in Oran for the Algerian Communist Party and a prominent leader in the Algerian feminist movement. From 1943, until the organization was banned in 1954, Fodil was a leader in the Union des femmes d'Algérie. The organization primarily worked to alleviate socio-economic issues in the post-war period and supported anti-war efforts and Algerian independence. She served on the executive committee of the Women's International Democratic Federation and was part of the delegation of WIDF members who investigated war crimes in North Korea in 1951. She and her husband were assassinated in 1962.
Lucette Mazzella was a teacher, communist organizer and women's rights activist in Algeria and Morocco. She taught school in French Morocco from 1929 until 1952, and then in French Algeria from 1954 to 1964. Mazzella was a co-founder of the Union des femmes du Maroc in 1944 and served as the organization's first secretary general. She was a delegate to the founding executive council for the Women's International Democratic Federation as a representative for Morocco in 1945.
Candelaria Rodríguez Hernández was a Cuban lawyer and anti-war activist. After graduating from the University of Havana in 1949, she became active in leftist causes, aimed at revising the Cuban Civil Code and improving women's rights. She was a founder of the Federación Democrática de Mujeres Cubanas, an affiliation of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). In 1951, she participated in WIDF's fact-finding mission to North Korea. Upon her return to Cuba, she was jailed, but later released. Her continued efforts to prevent Cubans participating in the Korean War resulted in several more arrests and loss of her post as a legal advisor at the National Bank of Cuba. The "Hands Off Korea" campaign she led with Edith García Buchaca was effective in turning public opinion against Cuban involvement in the conflict. She attended several WIDF congresses and conferences and served on the Executive Council of the international organization from 1953.
Fathia Bettahar was an Algerian teacher, policy advisor, and women's rights activist. After completing her schooling at the normal school in Oran in 1955, she taught from 1956 to 1964 before moving into school administration until 1974. During this time, she became involved in women's rights issues and joined the Union nationale des femmes algériennes. She was particularly interested in initiatives to help women and girls gain an education. In 1974, she was elected as secretary general of the National Union of Algerian Women, and simultaneously served as the secretary general of the Pan-African Women's Organization (PAWO). She attended numerous women's conferences including the 1975 World Conference on Women hosted in Mexico City, the 1975 Women's International Democratic Federation Congress of Berlin, East Germany, and the 1985 World Conference on Women held in Nairobi, Kenya. She was a vice president of the WIDF from 1975 to 1981, while continuing as the PAWO leader until 1986.
Maria Ruth Neto is a former Angolan independence activist, political organizer, and women's rights campaigner. Although she studied nursing in Portugal and Germany, in 1968 she joined the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola and focused on securing Angola's independence from Portugal. Fearing retaliation from the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, she lived abroad in Germany, Tanzania and Zambia until 1975, when independence was achieved. From the early 1970s, she was the leader of the Organização das Mulheres de Angola and became the organization's first national coordinator in 1976. OMA was an affiliate of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) and from 1976 she served as a vice president on their executive committee and attended and spoke at many of the organization's conferences and seminars over the next decades. In 1977, she was elected to the Central Committee of the MPLA, and was re-elected in 1985. When the leadership of the OMA was restructured in 1983, she served as its secretary general until 1999. In 1986, she became the secretary general of the Pan-African Women's Organization and held that post until 1997.
"500 femmes en congrès"[500 Women in Congress]. L'Humanité (in French). Paris, France. 21 November 1998. Archived from the original on 3 November 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
Cooke, Susan (20 November 2015). "Make Every Day a Children's Day". South Coast Herald. Port Shepstone, South Africa. Archived from the original on 30 October 2023. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
"Dedican a Vilma Espín XV Congreso de FDIM en Brasil"[XV FDIM Congress in Brazil Dedicated to Vilma Espín]. Radio Santa Cruz (in Spanish). Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba. 8 April 2012. Archived from the original on 4 October 2022. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
Rojas Rey, Ana Elsa (15 September 2016). "La paz de las mujeres es la paz para el mundo"[Peace for Women Is Peace for the World]. Semanario Voz (in Spanish). Bogotá, Colombia. Archived from the original on 30 July 2020. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
Women's International Democratic Federation (1949). Session of the Council of the Women's International Democratic Federation Moscow 1949 (Report). Vol.6. Moscow, USSR: Soviet Women. OCLC779069314.
Xavier, Márcia (12 April 2012). "Mulheres do mundo encerram evento em Brasília: grande mobilização"[Women of the World Close Event in Brasília: Great Mobilization]. Vermelho (in Portuguese). Brasília, Brazil: Vermelho Network. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
Gradskova, Yulia (2022). The Women's International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the 'Whole World'?. New York, New York: Routledge. ISBN978-0-367-50478-6.
Resolutions of the Women's International Democratic Federation at the International Congress of Women, Paris, November–December 1945 – via ASP: Women and Social Movements
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