Peace on Our Terms
The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
In the watershed year of 1919, world leaders met in Paris, promising to build a new international order rooted in democracy and social justice. Female activists demanded that statesmen live up to their word. Excluded from the negotiating table, women met separately, crafted their own agendas, and captured global headlines with a message that was both straightforward and revolutionary: enduring peace depended as much on recognition of the fundamental humanity and equality of all people—regardless of sex, race, class, or creed—as on respect for the sovereignty of independent states.
Peace on Our Terms follows dozens of remarkable women from Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Asia as they crossed oceans and continents; commanded meeting halls in Paris, Zurich, and Washington; and marched in the streets of Cairo and Beijing. Mona L. Siegel’s sweeping global account of international organizing highlights how Egyptian and Chinese nationalists, Western and Japanese labor feminists, white Western suffragists, and African American civil rights advocates worked in tandem to advance women’s rights. Despite significant resistance, these pathbreaking women left their mark on emerging democratic constitutions and new institutions of global governance. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Peace on Our Terms is the first book to demonstrate the centrality of women’s activism to the Paris Peace Conference and the critical diplomatic events of 1919. Siegel tells the timely story of how female activists transformed women’s rights into a global rallying cry, laying a foundation for generations to come.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sacramento State history professor Siegel (The Moral Disarmament of France) delivers a riveting study of the "unprecedented wave of female activism" sparked by the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that brought an end to WWI. Though activists failed to persuade American president Woodrow Wilson to endorse women's suffrage as a plank in the peace accords, his vision of a "new liberal international order" inspired women all over the world to advocate for "social, economic, and political equality," according to Siegel. She profiles African-American activists Mary Church Terrell and Ida Gibbs Hunt, who fought for racial justice in the U.S. and abroad; Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi, a leader in the Egyptian independence movement; Soumay Tcheng, who served as an official attach to the Chinese delegation in Paris and played a key role in China's refusal to sign the Versailles Treaty; and French activist Jeanne Bouvier, who advocated for the rights of working class women. Siegel vividly describes how the feminist activism kick-started in 1919 crossed national borders and racial and class divides and propelled the women's rights movement through the rest of the 20th century. This sparkling, character-driven history will captive readers interested in the suffrage movement and feminist history.
