Gender and History最新文献

Common stories of second-wave feminism equate the period either explicitly or by reference to its presumed biological essentialism, with trans-exclusionary feminism. This article deep-dives into issues published between 1977 and 1979 of the Journal of Male Feminism, an underground newsletter for a predominantly North American-based male-to-female (M-T-F) cross-dressing community. It argues that these texts contain a rich set of theoretical resources and nuanced perspectives on sex and gender developed by trans people in the 1970s and therefore deserve to be read as part of an expanded canon of second-wave feminism.

This article analyses the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's (WILPF) and Women's International Democratic Federation's (WIDF) fact-finding missions sent to Chile in 1974. It explains how women's international organisations presented reports and information about human rights abuses during Genera Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973–1990). By using their publications, oral interviews, memoirs and press reports, the study sheds light on the extensive efforts deployed by the WILPF and WIDF to disseminate knowledge and promote actions designed to improve the lives of Chilean women. The article shows that women's international organisations promoted inclusive ideas of rights, including women's particular experiences under military rule, and that such efforts built in the organisations' previous experiences of human rights activism.

This article considers four international women's organisations – the International Council of Women, the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, the International Federation of University Women and the Open Door International – and their campaigns for the right of married women to undertake paid work. It examines how each organisation adopted and engaged with the language of human rights in the late 1920s and 1930s. It is argued that after 1948, precisely because of its formal adoption by the UN, the language of human rights became less usable as a way to make the point that women still faced inequalities, and so other framings became more significant. This article contributes to historiographies on international women's organisations, offers a detailed discussion of their activism against the marriage bar, and challenges the conventional chronology of the concept and language of human rights.

Though the slogan predates the Fourth UN World Conference on Women, ‘women's rights are human rights’ has become inextricably linked to US First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's keynote address at the 1995 Conference in Beijing. The speech turned a line socialised by transnational feminist organisers into a State Department mantra with long-lasting policy ripples still felt today. This article uses new sources from the Office of the First Lady to examine the intra-departmental dynamics, policy architecture and domestic political considerations that shaped the content of the speech and the Clinton Administration's conception of women's rights as human rights. Early documents show that a focus on human rights was not inevitable, as other policy areas were better developed with more public support. But fear of rollback from previous international standards, external pressures from civil society, a desire to link foreign policy with domestic political aims and ultimately a strong backlash to American participation at the Conference on the basis of China's human rights record all elevated women's human rights as a US delegation priority.