Women's International Democratic Federation

Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) is an international women's rights organization. It was established in 1945 and was most active during the Cold War. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the headquarters moved from Berlin to Paris. In 2002, when Brazilian member, Macia Campot was elected president, the office relocated to Brasilia, and subsequently the WIDF's secretariat was located to São Paulo at Rua Guimarães Passos, 422, Vila Mariana, CEP 04107-031, in 2007. The WIDF's magazine, Women of the Whole World, was published in six languages – Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. According to historian Francisca de Haan, the WIDF was "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era".
WIDF was founded in Paris in 1945, as an anti-fascist organization with the intent of engaging women in the efforts to prevent war and combat the racist and sexist ideology of fascist regimes. At its organizing conference, Eugenie Cotton was elected as president and the organizational goals were defined as promoting active participation in the fight against fascism and in favor of world peace, in protecting public health with particular focus on child welfare, in improving the status of women's rights, and in building internationalist friendships among women.
During the Cold War era, WIDF was described in recovered FBI files as Communist-leaning and pro-Soviet. International Day for Protection of Children, observed since 1950 in many countries as Children's Day on June 1, was established by the Federation at its November 1949 congress in Moscow. In 1951, the organization was banned by French authorities and relocated to East Berlin. American women's organizations became concerned that WIDF would use appeals to rally participation in women's rights and motherhood as propaganda to increase anti-American sentiment and promote communism. At various points in its history, the WIDF enjoyed consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. It was at the initiation of representatives of the WIDF in the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations that the UN declared the International Women's Year in 1975.
History
Background
From the beginnings of World War II left-leaning women who were communist, liberal, or socialist were active in the fight against fascism and the spread of the racist and sexist ideology of Nazism. During the war, many of the activists, who were primarily aristocrats and intellectuals, took part in anti-fascist conferences throughout Europe, and began to develop a transnational framework for social and political policies that would prevent future conflicts. Eugénie Cotton attended a meeting of the (Union of French Women) in 1944, which initially sparked the idea for forming the Women International Democratic Federation. Subsequently, she attended a celebration of International Women's Day in London in 1945. Meeting there with a group of women from Belgium, China, France, Italy, the Soviet Union, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia consensus was reached to form the International Initiative Committee and host an international congress to bring left-leaning women together, although the war had ended only six months prior in Europe and was still on-going in Asia. Sponsors of the event were the and the Soviet Women's Anti-Fascist Committee. WIDF's internal sources about its origin are vague in regard to the political affiliations of the founders, focusing instead on involvement by the founders in the resistance and anti-fascist movements during and immediately following the war with the intent of the organization being open to all progressive women.
The congress was held between 26 and 30 November 1945 at the Palais de la Mutualité in Paris. 850 delegates from 40 countries and representing 181 women's organizations attended the founding meeting of the Women's International Democratic Federation. Cotton was elected as president of WIDF and would serve in that capacity until her death in 1967. The organizational goals were defined as promoting active participation in the fight against fascism and in favor of world peace, in protecting public health with particular focus on child welfare, in improving the status of women's rights, and in building internationalist friendships among women. The delegates adopted an International Charter of Women, which aimed at creating global standards protecting women's rights and opportunities as citizens, mothers, and workers. They also had numerous debates about the voting system to be used; the naming of the organization, replacing the original wording using "anti-fascist" with "democratic"; and whether WIDF would have any authority to control member organizations.
The delegates ultimately decided to host triennial congresses with votes on issues based on the size of the population that each national delegation represented. The executive council, made up of a delegate from each member country, was to meet every year. The secretariat was composed of a secretary general and four staff members, who would carry out the management of the federation business, with the exception of bookkeeping, which was assigned to a three-member commission. Among the founding members were Elizabeth Acland Allen (UK), Cécile Brunschvicg (France), Dolores Ibárruri (Spain), Ana Pauker (Romania), Kata Pejnović (Yugoslavia), (Russia), Jessie Street (Australia), and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier (France), Among the women sending congratulations and support for the founding of WDIF were Clementine Churchill, wife of the British Prime Minister; Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, and , wife of the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. Margery Corbett Ashby, president of the International Alliance of Women attended the congress, but later wrote to her husband that failure to organize women in the Near East would result in the communist women's dominance there.
Rivalry with other international organizations
After the founding of the WIDF, an intense rivalry developed between the three major international women's groups – the International Alliance of Women, the International Council of Women, and the WIDF. Both the International Alliance of Women and the International Council of Women claimed to be apolitical, but according to historian Francisca de Haan "used imperialist notions of western superiority to support their claims for women's rights". Both organizations condoned colonial and imperial systems and stressed the importance of democracy in achieving fundamental human rights such as freedom of conscience, press, and speech. Their members were typically conservative, upper-class, Christian women from Europe, or places such as Australia, Canada, and the United States, where large numbers of Europeans had settled. After World War I, the International Council of Women and International Alliance of Women actively recruited affiliates in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, but the leadership tended to be from Europe and the United States, the congresses were held primarily in Europe, and the official languages of the groups were English, French, and German. To resolve women's issues they fostered interaction with ruling elites. For example, International Council of Women and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, created in 1915 by members of the International Alliance of Women and other elite women's groups, approached peace activism by urging heads of nations towards pacifism and avoidance of war through diplomatic channels and improved understanding of cultural differences. Publications such as International Alliance of Women member Adele Schreiber-Krieger's Journey towards Freedom (1955) emphasized the role of western women in assisting women from the "third world" in eliminating prevalent customs like child marriage, foot binding, seclusion, veiling, and widow sacrifice, without evaluating how western systems impacted colonized women or crediting women of the Global South or the Eastern world for their own efforts in asserting their agency.
WIDF regarded peace as a prerequisite for fighting against fascism and obtaining rights for women and children. Peace as seen by WIDF members, unlike the pacifist stance of the western feminist groups, was not an avoidance or absence of war, but could only be attained if social justice was achieved. The organization strongly supported decolonization and national independence movements, and was active in the anti-war movement pushing for peace in Africa and Asia. Its membership and leadership included women from throughout the world, although its congresses were primarily held in Europe. It was an explicitly anti-racist organization, whose members were working-class. For example, the WIDF board at its founding established a vice presidency post for a Chinese delegate, which was filled by Chang Cai in 1948. Egyptian feminist Saiza Nabarawi, who was a vice president of the International Alliance of Women, attended WIDF's 1952 Vienna Congress and was asked by the board of the IAW to choose which organization she preferred. She resigned from the International Alliance of Women's board and became a vice president of WIDF in 1953. The WIDF board had ten vice presidents that year, including besides Nabarawi, (Hungarian People's Republic), Andrea Andreen (Sweden), Cai (China), Monica Felton (UK), Ibarruri (Spain), Funmilayo Ransome Kuti (Colonial Nigeria), Rita Montagnana (Italy), Popova (Russia), and (West Germany) and established positions for vice presidents to be appointed from Brazil, India, Japan, and the United States. WIDF's monthly magazine, which became a quarterly publication in 1966, Women of the Whole World, was produced in six languages – Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
First decades
The US affiliate of the WIDF, the Congress of American Women formed in 1946, along the lines of the popular front. Although the Congress of American Women declared itself to be independent of political alliance, the Communist Party publicly endorsed the organization upon its founding. That same year the (Indonesian Women's Congress, Kowani) formed and joined WIDF because of its support for decolonization. In 1947, WIDF was granted consultative status category B for the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and its Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). The second congress of the WIDF was held in 1948 in Budapest and attended by 390 delegates representing fifty-one countries.
The Congress of American Women was targeted by the Committee on Un-American Activities of the United States House of Representatives (HUAC) in 1949, because of the support it had been given by the Communist Party. The committee described WIDF as being a communist front using feminism as a guise to lure women to join the organization and concluded that the organization was a wing of Soviet propaganda mechanisms which used a peace campaign to promote disarmament and foster the communist take-over of democratic nations. The Indonesian group Kowani withdrew from WIDF in 1949 because of objections by some of its affiliates to the organization's ties to socialism, but the following year, another Indonesian organization, Gerwis (later re-named Gerwani) affiliated with WIDF.
French authorities banned WIDF in 1951, and the organization relocated to East Berlin. 613 delegates from sixty-seven countries attended the third congress hosted in 1953 in Copenhagen. Among the nearly 2,000 attendants were over 1,300 guests and observers. The Indonesian delegation led by Soerastri Karma Trimurti and a number of other members of Gerwani, included women from the Minahasa Women's Union, (Democratic Women) and (Women of the People) organizations. The focus of the Congress was fostering peace in light of on-going conflicts like the Korean War and the war to end French rule in Vietnam. Resolutions were adopted at the congress to support an immediate end to both wars and to adopt a Declaration on the Rights of Women. The declaration included provisions for the right to work, maternity leave, and equal pay for women; creation of child care and kindergarten centers for working women; protection of the civil and educational rights of women and children; support for women's suffrage and the right to political representation; equal rights with men in owning property and protecting peasant women's land ownership; and the right for women to freely associate and participate in organizations.
Scholarly perception of the organization
According to de Haan, Cold War policies and investigations and repercussions from the investigations of McCarthyism had long-lasting effects on knowledge about the WIDF and international women's interactions after World War II. WIDF, although it originated in Paris, was described by 20th-century scholars as originating behind the iron curtain. Cold War stereotypes impacted the legacy of the organization, effectively erasing it from the history of international women's movements. If WIDF was described by scholars or activists, it was depicted as a pro-Soviet, communist front organization, which received both political and financial support from the USSR. Some of these accounts were based on recovered records of the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Focus by scholars on the social and cultural history of the cold war, and increased feminist scholarship on communist women's activism since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, have led to and understanding that women's international relationships were more complex and diverse than previously acknowledged. While the activists of WIDF were involved in developing transnational socialist networks and resolving women's issues, the political context of party and state ideology impacted how they advocated for women's interests. Scholars have subsequently described the WIDF an active feminist organization advocating for women's rights. Scholarship in the 21st century recognizes that the WIDF played an important role in supporting women's anti-colonial struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Members
Freda Brown (Australia)
Tsola Dragoycheva (Bulgaria)
Ruth Mompati (South Africa)
Umi Sardjono (Indonesia)
(Indonesia)
Affiliates
All-China Women's Federation
National Assembly of Women
National Federation of Indian Women
Democratic Women's League of Germany
National Union of Sahrawi Women
Women's Federation of Brazil
See also
International Communist Women's Secretariat
International Socialist Women's Conferences
Socialist International Women
Other post-1945 international "communist fronts"
International Association of Democratic Lawyers
International Federation of Resistance Fighters – Association of Anti-Fascists
International Organization of Journalists
International Union of Students
World Federation of Democratic Youth
World Federation of Scientific Workers
World Federation of Trade Unions
World Peace Council
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Elisabeth Armstrong, “Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women's Movement in Asia and the Women's International Democratic Federation.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society. Winter2016, Vol. 41 Issue 2, p305-331
Michelle Chase, “Hands Off Korea: Women’s Internationalist Solidarity and Peace Activism in Early Cold War Cuba,” Journal of Women’s History 32.3 (2020).
Yulia Gradskova, The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’?. New York: Routledge, 2022. ISBN 9780367504786
Full text of the HUAC report on the Congress of American Women, including information about the founding of the WIDF in Paris in 1945.
Resolutions of the Women's International Democratic Federation at the International Congress of Women, Paris, November-December 1945 – via ASP: Women and Social Movements
External links
Latest version of the WIDF website (Dec.14, 2012) on the Wayback Machine. Only available in Portuguese.
Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) Records Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections
Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) Records at the International Institute for Social History (IISH) in the Netherlands
International women's organizations
Communist front organizations
Organizations established in 1945
International organisations based in Brazil
Women's wings of communist parties