page_title: Inter-Allied Women's Conference
section_title: February
hierarchical_section_title: Inter-Allied Women's Conference / Actions / February
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929) Deutsch: Porträt von Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Anmerkung: anonymer Autor zum Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung 1913, Herausgeber Bain News Service (von George Grantham Bain (1865–1944))
context_page_description: The Inter-Allied Women's Conference opened in Paris on 10 February 1919. It was convened parallel to the Paris Peace Conference to introduce women's issues to the peace process after the First World War. Leaders in the international women's suffrage movement had been denied the opportunity to participate in the official proceedings several times before being allowed to make a presentation before the Commission on International Labour Legislation. On 10 April, women were finally allowed to present a resolution to the League of Nations Commission. It covered the trafficking and sale of women and children, their political and suffrage status, and the transformation of education to include the human rights of all persons in each nation.
  Though the women involved failed to achieve many of their aims, their efforts marked the first time that women were allowed to participate formally in an international treaty negotiation. They were successful in gaining the right for women to serve in the League of Nations in all capacities, whether as staff or delegates; and in gaining adoption of their provisions for humane labour conditions and the prevention of trafficking.
context_section_description: The Paris Peace Conference negotiations took place from January to May 1919, while the women's conference convened from mid-February to mid-April. On 10 February, when the women's conference opened, Thomson and Louise Compain, a writer and member of the French Union for Women's Suffrage, began serving as editors and translators to the women's conference secretary, Suzanne Grinberg, a lawyer, vice-president of the Association du Jeune Barreau in Paris, and secretary of the central committee of the French Union for Women's Suffrage. Constance Drexel, a German-American newspaper reporter, wrote daily dispatches for the Chicago Tribune Foreign News Service and collaborated with the women delegates throughout the conference.
  On 11 February, a delegation led by chair Millicent Fawcett, a leader in the British suffrage movement and president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, called on Wilson.  The delegation included Zabel Yesayan of Armenia, who brought a report about women in Armenia and Macedonia being captured during the war and detained in harems; Margherita Ancona, president of the National Pro Suffrage Federation for Italy; and Nina Boyle (Union of South Africa), a member of the Women's Freedom League and a journalist. Belgian delegates included Jane Brigode, president of the Belgian Federation for Suffrage and Marie Parent, president of the Belgian National Council of Women and League for Rights of Women. Also present were British delegates Ray Strachey, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and Rosamond Smith. The French women who participated in the delegation were de Witt-Schlumberger; Cécile Brunschvicg, a founder of the French Union for Women's Suffrage and its first general secretary; and Marguerite Pichon-Landry, chair of the legislation section of the National Council of French Women. The delegates from the US were Katharine Bement Davis, head of the US government's Women's Department of Social Hygiene; Florence Jaffray Harriman, chair of the Women's Committee of the Democratic Party; and Juliet Barrett Rublee, a member of the National Birth Control League and the Cornish [New Hampshire] Equal Suffrage League. The delegation asked if a Women's Commission could be included in the conference to address the concerns of women and children. At the meeting Wilson suggested, instead, that the male diplomats from the peace conference form a Women's Commission to which the Inter-Allied Women's Conference could serve as advisers.
  The following day, an almost identical delegation to that which had met with Wilson, met with French President Raymond Poincaré and his wife, Henriette, at the Élysée Palace. It included de Witt-Schlumberger, Ruth Atkinson, president of the Nelson, New Zealand branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and delegates from Belgium, France, Italy, the UK, and possibly Australia. Also present were three women from the US: Harriman, Rublee, and Harriet Taylor, head of the YMCA in France. On 13 February, Wilson took the request to the Council of Ten—Arthur Balfour (UK), Georges Clemenceau (France), Robert Lansing (US), Baron Nobuaki Makino (Japan), Viscount Alfred Milner (UK), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Stephen Pichon (France), Sidney Sonnino (Italy), and Wilson—along with the Maharaja of Bikaner Ganga Singh (India) and other dignitaries. Once again the women's proposal was dismissed, with Prime Minister Clemenceau recommending that they be referred to work with the Commission on Labour.
  Their dismissal did not stop the women from attempting to gain support from the peace conference delegates. They met with Jules Cambon, Paul Hymans and Poincaré, all of whom agreed that the women's input on such issues as deportations from Armenia, Belgium, Greece, France, Poland, and Serbia and the sale of women in Greece and the Ottoman Empire were pertinent issues on which a women's commission might gather data. At the end of February, some of the women who had come from Britain returned home and were replaced in early March by Margery Corbett Ashby, a member of the ex
caption: Millicent Fawcett
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