Women and the Peace Movement

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WOMEN AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT

WOMEN AND THE PEACE MOVEMENT. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was created in 1915 and was active throughout the twentieth century. The WILPF was born out of a conference in The Hague that was attended by women from many countries, including those involved in World War I. Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, was a leader in organizing the WILPF as a transnational attempt by women to stop the war. Prior to the WILPF, the Women's Peace Party, a faction of the suffragist movement, had been commitedly antiwar and was strongly involved in the groups emerging to prevent the entry of the United States into that conflict.

Before the birth of the modern peace movement, individual women had played a key role in social reform, and elements of the women's rights and abolitionist movements identified with peace causes. At the beginning of the twentieth century the peace movement was predominantly male in leadership and membership. Women, Emma Goldman among them, who had been active in socialist movements began to promote a specific transnational role for women. In Congress, Representative Jeanette Rankin voted against U.S. entry into both world wars.

Feminists such as Crystal Eastman and Emily Green Balch initiated a critical dialogue about patriarchy, domination, and war; like Goldmann, Addams, and others they stressed internationalism. As Rosika Schwimmer put it, "I have no country but the world." During the 1920s and 1930s, Dorothy Day, an absolute pacifist and Roman Catholic activist (she founded the Catholic Worker ) kept the concept of world peace alive in the public arena. After World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt worked closely with Ralph Bunche to advance UN policies.

In 1960 Women Strike for Peace formed around the issues of nuclear testing; the organization stressed the responsibility of women to stop nuclear testing and protect future generations. The magazine Liberation was one of the earliest to engage in a dialogue about militarism and gender, in particular promoting the writings of nonviolent theorist and activist Barbara Deming. Deming critiqued the too-easy adoption of violent methods and support for wars of national liberation. The antiwar movement also received support from artists—singer Joan Baez gave concerts in support of the movement, raised funds, and became involved in nonviolence as a trainer and activist.

In the 1970s, women became a major, perhaps the major, constituency of the peace movement; many feminists, including Carol Cohn, addressed the issue of antimilitarism, critiquing the male language of strategy. The UN "Decade of the Woman" (1975–1985) led to increased global awareness of and involvement in the peace movement by women in the United States. Major women's demonstrations took place at the Pentagon in 1980 and 1981; Helen Caldecott, an Australian doctor, along with Randall Forsberg became the most prominent spokesperson for nuclear freeze in the United States.

Heartened by the success in 1981–1982 of the Greenham Common women's peace camp at a cruise missile base in the United Kingdom, American women gathered at the Seneca army depot in New York to establish a camp and blockade the base nonviolently. In Nevada, women engaged in major civil disobedience on Mother's Day 1987 against nuclear tests in that state.

During the twentieth century, the peace movement has been changed in terms of membership, leaders, and agenda. More women are now active in the peace movement than men, and leadership is divided equally between women and men.