The Women’s Movement in Wartime

This is a comparative, interdisciplinary book that explores the responses of the women’s movement to World War I in all of the major belligerent nations.

A comparative, interdisciplinary book which explores the responses of the women’s movement to World War I in all of the major belligerent nations. Working in the fields of gender studies and women’s history, the contributors cover key topics including women’s relationship with the state and with the nation, the status of women’s war service, women’s role as mothers in wartime, women’s suffrage, peace and the aftermath of war, and women’s guilt and responsibility.

ALISON S. FELL is Lecturer in French at Lancaster University, UK. She is author of Liberty, Equality, Maternity (2003) and has published widely on Twentieth-century women’s writing and culture. She is currently writing a book on First World War French nurse memoirs.
INGRID SHARP is Senior Lecturer in German at Leeds University, UK. Her research focuses on the history of the Women’s Movement in Germany and its international connections. She has published several articles on gender relations in Germany during the First World War and the Weimar Republic, and is co-editor, with Jane Jordan, of Diseases of the Body Politic: Josephine Butler and the Prostitution Campaigns (2003).

Introduction: The Women’s Movement and the First World War–A.S.Fell & I.Sharp * ‘Indian Sisters!…Send your Husbands, Brothers, Sons’: India, Women and the First World War–S.Das * Martial Spirit and Mobilisation Myths: Women and the ‘Ideas of 1914’ in Germany–C.Siebrecht * ‘The Women of France do not wish to Speak about Peace’: Julie Siegfried and the Response of the ‘Conseil National des Femmes Fransçaises’ to the First World War–A.S.Fell * Blaming the Women: Women’s Responsibility for the First World War–I.Sharp * The Creation of an Icon in Defence of Hélène Brion: Pacifists and Feminists in the French Minority Media–J.Shearer * ‘In a Different Voice’: Responses of Hungarian Feminism to the First World War–J.Acsády * Feminism and Suffrage in Russia: Women, War and Revolution 1914-17–O.Shnyrova * The Pankhursts and the Great War–J.Purvis * ‘The Woman who Dared’: Major Mabel St Clair Stobart–A.K.Smith * Esther Pohl Lovejoy, M.D., the First World War, and a Feminist Critique of Wartime Violence–K.Jensen * Elizabeth Rotten and the ‘Auskunftsund Hilfsstelle für Deutschland im Ausland und Ausländer in Deutschland’, 1914-18–M.Stibbe * Preserving Utopia: the ‘German League for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform’ in the First World War–P.Davies * ‘The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’ and Reconciliation after the Great War–E.Kuhlman * Sacrificial Rituals and Wounded Hearts: the Uses of Christian Symbolism in French and German Women’s Responses to the First World War–C.O’Brien * *