Clara-Anna Egger

Practicing Feminist Internationalism

After the Great War, the women’s rights movement successfully reconstituted and came to the fore to expand the international feminist network born out of the suffrage movement. The international women’s movement organizations sought to adapt to a new prevalent sense of internationalism in the 1920s. In my thesis, I will focus on the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF); the oldest women’s peace organization in the world. For the members of WILPF feminism and pacifism were closely intertwined, and with the conviction that without peace, women will not obtain equality to men, WILPF tried to advance their cause by using various methods. One of such was the travels of the members who could afford to voyage extensively. In my project, I will follow the tracks of British and US-American WILPF members on their journeys through Continental Europe from 1919 to 1939. Thereby, seeking to investigate how traveling helped to advance WILPF’s cause.