As I have researched and read for my project, I feel like I have already greatly shifted and morphed my ideas. I am primarily interested in the international and transnational flows and connections surrounding women’s movements and suffrage. While this topic is broad, I feel I have finally (slightly) narrowed and identified the focus of my project.
Towards the beginning of my research, I read Irma Sulkunen’s article An International Comparison of Women’s Suffrage: The Cases of Finland and New Zealand in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century. This article takes a comparative approach, and I found it particularly interesting in its focus and analysis of two peripheral countries who were “trailblazers of women’s suffrage”. The scholarship on women’s suffrage in particular is generally dominated by the British and American cases, so I found this article insightful and an important contribution in providing an often overlooked narrative and area of women’s suffrage.
While this interest in more peripheral cases stayed in my mind, my research then led me to international organisations, most prominently what Leila Rupp identifies as the three main international women’s organisations: International Council of Women, the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (which then became the International Alliance of Women), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. These organisations and their various meetings, exchanges and conferences were hotspots of transnational ideas, flows, and cooperation. I find them very interesting and with many important insights, especially due to their work and international nature through the first several decades of the twentieth century when there were many strong senses of nationalism.
However, as I read more, I came to realise the Eurocentricity of these organisations, including in their membership composition, ideas, meeting locations, and languages. This led me back to my interest in more peripheral examples, and I started to look at transnational examples and influences from the non-Western world. Particularly after the First World War, there was increased involvement of non-Western women in both the three main organisations stated above, and the formation of new organisations. Articles by scholars including Sumita Mukherjee particularly highlighted the efforts by non-Western women to claim their own agency in international women’s movements, including in European colonies such as India and other Asian countries.
Over the last few days, I have been facing many decisions on how to actually carry out my project. Do I look at the impact of one international organisation on a country or geographical region? Do I take international organisations (or perhaps only one or two) as my focal point and see who attended, their aims, achievements and effectiveness? Or do I take a comparative approach to analyse different transnational movements?
My current thinking (although my ideas seem to be continually morphing and changing) is to look at international organisations in the first wave of the women’s movement, focusing from around the 1910s to the interwar years. Taking a primarily transnational approach (but with perhaps some comparative aspects), I would look at their aims, composition, and impact. As part of this, I can bring in the Eurocentric critique and the efforts to counter continued colonial and imperialist attitudes in these transnational networks and international organisations, including women of the Global South looking for their own representation, participation, and impact.
My current main concern is the continued large breadth. I am nevertheless looking forward to presenting my current research, questions, and ideas on Tuesday in more detail, and listening and taking on any feedback. What has become obvious to me so far is how ideas towards a project continuously evolve as more research is done. I look forward to seeing what mine will further reveal and where it will take me.