Balch, Emily Greene (1867–1961), pacifist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.Born in Massachusetts, educated at Bryn Mawr College, Balch became an economics professor at Wellesley College until 1919, when she was fired for her antiwar activities during World War I. She was one of the founders and leaders of the Woman's Peace Party (1915–19) and the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), founded in Zurich in 1919. She served as WILPF's international secretary from 1919 to 1922 and in a number of other leadership positions until her retirement in 1950. Her belief in transnational ideals,
nonviolence, and justice, as well as her commitment to women's equality and freedom, shaped her approach to peace activism. A “practical” pacifist and feminist, Balch held that, as responsible citizens, women must work to end war by promoting just and nonviolent alternatives such as disarmament and peaceful international processes for conflict resolution and for meeting human needs. Believing most strongly that cooperative international endeavors offered the first steps toward peace, Balch proposed plans for mediation of the conflicts in Manchuria and Spain during the 1930s. She was one of two recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946.
[See also
Addams, Jane;
Pacifism.]
Bibliography
Mercedes M. Randall , Improper Bostonian: Emily Greene Balch, 1964.
Mercedes Randall, ed., Beyond Nationalism: The Social Thought of Emily Greene Balch, 1972.
Anne Marie Pois , Foreshadowing: Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and the Ecofeminism/Pacifist Feminism of the 1980s, Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 20, No. 4 (October 1995): 439–465.
Anne Marie Pois
