Bridging the ideological divide: Liberal and socialist collaboration in the women’s international league for peace and freedom, 1919–1945

Abstract

For the past century, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has acted as a forum for women from across the political spectrum to come together in pursuit of international peace and political, economic, and social justice for all. A close examination of the political makeup of membership within the British branch of the WILPF and the mechanisms through which British women from different political backgrounds forged and sustained a working partnership with each other and their international sisters in the decades between the two world wars provides a valuable case study in women’s collaboration across ideological divides. It substantiates the revisionist argument that the divide between socialist women and liberal (or so-called bourgeois) feminists has been overstated, and highlights international politics and the international peace movement as a particular sphere of collaboration between socialist and liberal women during feminism’s first wave.