| Until the early 1970s, historians discussed the activities of women in the United States during the 1920s through a startlingly narrow lens. Claiming the decade was dead as far as women's reform and activism was concerned, historians focused instead on the morals and questionable behavior of the new woman of the twenties. More recent studies expand our understanding of women's activities in the twenties and demonstrate that women were still engaged in reform activities. Female activism in the twenties concentrated on world peace. Prior to 1900 advocating world peace was considered too masculine for women since peace dealt with issues of diplomacy, politics, and the military. When peace came to be defined in moral and familial terms, it came within the purview of women. Women in the 1920s formed, organized, and headed four peace organizations---the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Women's Peace Union (WPU), the Women's Peace Society (WPS), and the National Committee for the Cause and Cure of War (NCCCW or CCCW).; The first two decades in the twentieth century were the formative years of the women's peace movement in the United States. The issue of peace, previously within the realms of politics, became a moral one as society learned about the horrors of war through the media. Women challenged the notion that peace was an issue men should deal with in politics, law, foreign relations, and diplomacy. Instead they developed a set of ideas, values and reasons why women were suited to lobby and argue for the cause of peace. Women were successful in their adaptation of peace and by 1920 peace was very much a "woman's issue."; This dissertation explores the images of women and peace in the first two decades of the twentieth century in order to contribute to the understanding of the development of the women's peace movement. This work demonstrates that women formulated ideas about their unique connection to the issue of peace far earlier than is generally accepted, and that the early female peace theorists used similar arguments later feminists (in the 1960s to 1990s) explored and claimed as their own. |
