“Speaking Truth to Power” in Transnational Feminist History

Year 2013, Issue: 38, 19 - 24, 01.10.2013

Leila J. Rupp

Abstract

The moments in the history of Transnational Feminism that I find most compelling are those in which women from a variety of cultures can be found “speaking truth to power,” a favorite US progressive concept first advocated by the Religious Society of Friends in the 1950s “Speak Truth to Power” . Given the dominance of women from the United States, Great Britain, northern and western Europe, and the “neo-Europes” of Australia and Canada in the transnational women’s organizations that flourished from the late nineteenth century through the Second World War, it is not surprising that women from other parts of the world had to fight against feminist orientalist assumptions about a whole range of issues, from the very nature of feminism to the impact of global power dynamics on organizing across national borders Zonana; Weber, “Unveiling”; Melman; Lewis . Although the context has changed, many of the struggles within the three transnational women’s organizations I researched for my book, Worlds of Women, remain powerfully present today Rupp . If we listen to the voices of women who challenged the power dynamics within transnational women’s organizations in the past, perhaps we can think more productively about Transnational Feminism in the present.

References

• Ali, Shareefeh Hamid. “East and West in Co-operation,” 1935, IAW Papers, Box 1, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Print.
• Ashby, Margery Corbett to Carrie Chapman Catt, 9 Jun. 1926, NAWSA Papers, Reel 11, Library of Congress. Print.
• Badran, Margot. Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton: Princeton UP., 1994. Print.
• Bekir, Bayan Latife. “Accueil de la Turquie,” Jus Suffragii 29/7, Apr. 1935. Print.
• Chen, Chiyin to Anne Zuelbin [German], 14 May 1932, WILPF Papers, Reel 20, Microfilm Edition, Microfilming Corporation of America. Microfilm.
• de Haan, Francisca. “Eugénie Cotton, Pak-Den-ai and Claudia Jones: Rethinking Transnational Feminism and International Politics.” Journal of Women’s History, forthcoming.
• -----. “Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).” Women’s History Review 19.4 (2010): 547–73. Print.
• “Delegates and Friends,” 1935, IAW Papers, Box 1, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Print.
• Garner, Karen. Shaping a Global Women’s Agenda: Women’s NGOs and Global Governance, 1925–1985. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP., 2010. Print.
• Grewal, Inderpal and Caren Kaplan. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1994. Print.
• Jacot, A. to Madame [French], 15 Apr. 1937, WILPF Papers, Reel 3, Microfilm Edition, Microfilming Corporation of America. Microfilm.
• Laville, Helen. Cold War Women: The International Activities of American Women’s Organisations. Manchester: Manchester UP., 2002. Print.
• Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation. New York and London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
• Melman, Billie. Women’s Orients: English Women and the Middle East, 1718– 1918. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1992. Print.
• Minutes [French], International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship Executive Committee, Copenhagen, 5 Jul. 1939, IAW papers, Fawcett Library, London. Print.
• Minutes, WILPF Ninth World Congress, Luhacovice, 27–31 Jul. 1937, WILPF Papers, Reel 21, Microfilm Edition, Microfilming Corporation of America. Microfilm.
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Anne Russo, and Lourdes M. Torres, eds. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1991. Print.
• Pojmann, Wendy. Italian Women and International Cold War Politics, 1944– 1968. New York: Fordham UP. 2013. Print.
• Rupp, Leila J. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton: Princeton UP. 1997. Print.
• Sha`rawi, Huda. Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist. Trans. Margot Badran. New York: Feminist Press, 1987. Print.
• “Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence.” Quaker.org. Web. 30 Apr. 2013.
• Weber, Charlotte. “Between Nationalism and Feminism: The Eastern Women’s Congresses of 1930 and 1932.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 4.1 (2008): 83–106. Print.
• -----. “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911–1950.” Feminist Studies 27 (2001): 125– 57. Print.
• Withuis, Jolande. Opoffering en Heroiek: De Mentale Wereld van een Communistische Vrouwenorganisatie in Naoorlogs Nederland, 1946– 1976. Amsterdam: Boom Meppel, 1990. Print.
• Zonana, Joyce. “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of Jane Eyre.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 18 (1993): 592–617. Print.