The transnational feminist movement in the Americas in the 1930s


Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22517/25392662.22661

Keywords:

transnational feminist movement, Americas, 1930s, Inter-American Commission of Women.

Abstract

This paper aims to study how a transnational feminist movement emerged in the Americas and had a significant period of activity in the 1930s. It examines its goals and political strategies, as well as the impact of collective mobilization. Mobilizing collectively at the transnational and international level allowed feminists from the American continent to gain some victories as well as political legitimacy.

We will see how mobilizing collectively at the continental level served them as a strategy of struggle to acquire symbolic or material resources. At times, it increased the legitimacy of feminism that feminists were unable to obtain in their countries. The detour by the international was therefore extremely useful to them to put pressure on their governments. Besides, they did not conceive of their struggles in isolation. They believed that in order to obtain civil and political rights, but also the maintenance of peace on the continent, they had to build a collective struggle that transcended their borders.

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Author Biography

María Elvira Álvarez Giménez, University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.

Historian; PhD. in History from the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Her doctoral thesis, defended in December 2018, focuses on “Women in the Public Sphere in Bolivia from the Chaco War to the National Revolution (1935-1952)”. Her Master's thesis, which has been published in French, deals with "The Feminist Movement and the Right to Vote in Bolivia (1920-1952)". For her doctoral thesis, she has been a beneficiary of the scholarship of her University and the scholarship of excellence from the organization "Graduate Women International". During the master's and doctorate, she has been an exchange student and guest researcher in the USA, at Columbia and Duke universities respectively. She has taught at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, at the University of Havre and at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France. She is currently an associate researcher at the Center for Research on Latin America and the Iberian World at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.

References

Primary sources:

Archive of the Ministry of Cultures, Quito, Ecuador.

Municipal Library of Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Ecuador.

National Library of Chile, Santiago, Chile.

National Library of the Argentine Republic, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University, Boston, United States.

The New York Public Library, New York, United States.

The Library of Congress, Washington, United States.

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Published

2019-08-27

How to Cite

Álvarez Giménez, M. E. (2019). The transnational feminist movement in the Americas in the 1930s. Ciencia Nueva, Journal in History and Politics, 3(1), 112–133. https://doi.org/10.22517/25392662.22661

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2019): Enero - Junio

Section

Dossier

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