Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women: Europe Between the Two World WarsHelmut Gruber, Pamela M. Graves Until recently, histories of women tended to be segregated from the larger historical context. This pioneering volume places the role of women within the history of the interwar years, whenboth the women's and socialist movements became prominent, and raises the key question of how power was distributed between the genders in a historical setting. The emblematic title of this volume highlights the fundamental conception of this comparative study of eleven West European countries: that in the interwar decades two great movements gained in strength, converged, diverged, competed, and cooperated. Each of these movements is viewed as acomplex matrix of organized and unorganized participants. However, by far the most provocative questions deal with gender relations. Central to these are definitions of femininity and masculinity in terms of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at the workplace, in the home, and in the political arena. The mystique of the "new woman" in the 1920s and the 1930s challenged traditional notions of gender identity and relations, not the least of which was the redefinition of the role of men. The main issue addressed in this volume is not how male socialists "dealt with" the woman question or how women functioned in or outside left-wingparties; it rather centers on illustrating the power distribution between the sexes in specific political and cultural contexts. This rigorously focused and coherent volume, to which some of the best-known scholars in the field have contributed, will no doubt establish itself as the standard reference work for years to come. |
Contents
Great Feminist Expectations | 25 |
Introduction | 47 |
The New Proletarian Woman in Austria | 52 |
Perceptions | 95 |
Dilemmas | 135 |
Introduction | 171 |
Gender and Democratic Socialism in the Netherlands | 215 |
Pragmatic Women in | 238 |
Powers with Man the Hammer to Make the Revolution | 273 |
Socialism and Women on | 348 |
Women and the Left in the Shadow of Fascism | 381 |
Introduction | 415 |
Women Men and Socialism | 450 |
Socialist Feminists and Feminist Socialists in Denmark | 478 |
Women Citizenship and Power | 507 |
List of Contributors | 547 |
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Common terms and phrases
abortion active agenda argued became Berlin birth control bourgeois Cambrils campaign Catholic child civil Comintern committee Communist comrades congress contraception cultural delegates demands Despite Difesa economic elections equal fascist feminism feminist femmes France French gender Germany groups housewives Ibid industrial International interwar period Isabelle Blume labor movement Labour party Labour women leaders leadership liberal majority male marriage married women married women's right Mary Nash maternity membership ment middle-class militants motherhood mothers mujer municipal official Paris party's percent political proletarian radical Red Vienna responsibility role SDAP sex reform sexual SFIO Social Democratic women socialist feminism Socialist party socialist women society Soviet SPD women struggle Sweden tion trade union traditional unemployment Vienna vote wages Weimar Weimar Republic woman question women workers women's issues women's movement women's organizations women's suffrage working-class women World young youth