Inter-Allied Women's Conference
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.
[7][8] Fifty-two separate commissions,[7] and numerous committees, made up of diplomats, policy experts, and other specialists, framed the articles of the various treaties and presented them as recommendations to the Supreme Council.
[10][11] As world leaders gathered for negotiations to draft peace terms after the armistices, Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger—vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and president of the auxiliary organisation, the French Union for Women's Suffrage[12][13]—wrote a letter dated 18 January 1919 to the US President, Woodrow Wilson, urging him to allow women to participate in the discussions that would inform the treaty negotiations and policy making.
Though Wilson acknowledged their participation and sacrifices, he refused to grant women an official role in the peace process, arguing that their concerns were outside the scope of discussions and that conference delegates were not in a position to tell governments how to manage their internal affairs.
In parallel, the French feminists worked to persuade the male delegates to support the women's involvement,[23] as they were convinced that international co-operation and co-ordination were required to solve domestic socio-economic problems.
[24] The women who responded to the call to participate as delegates or to bring information about conditions in their countries included representatives from France, Italy, the UK, and the US, as well as Armenia, Belgium, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, and South Africa.
[31] 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.
[35] The delegation included Zabel Yesayan of Armenia,[38][39] who brought a report about women in Armenia and Macedonia being captured during the war and detained in harems;[40] Margherita Ancona, president of the National Pro Suffrage Federation for Italy;[22][29] and Nina Boyle (Union of South Africa),[29][38] a member of the Women's Freedom League and a journalist.
It included de Witt-Schlumberger,[29] Ruth Atkinson,[29][52] president of the Nelson, New Zealand branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union,[53] and delegates from Belgium, France, Italy, the UK, and possibly Australia.
[54] 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.
These included Brunschvicg;[66] Eugénie Beeckmans,[66] a seamstress and member of the French Confederation of Christian Workers (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens);[67] Georgette Bouillot,[66] a representative of the workers of the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail);[68] Jeanne Bouvier,[66] co-founder of the French Office for Work at Home, (Office français du travail à domicile) and trade unionist;[68] Gabrielle Duchêne,[66] co-founder of the Office français du travail à domicile,[68] pacifist, and member of the National Council of French Women;[69] and Maria Vérone,[66] a lawyer, journalist, and general secretary of the French League for Women's Rights (Ligue française pour le droit des femmes).
[75] The resolutions the women's conference delegates presented to the chair of the Labour Commission, Samuel Gompers, covered a variety of issues including the health hazards of working conditions.
[66] Two trade unionists from the US, Mary Anderson and Rose Schneiderman, arrived in Paris too late to participate in the presentation to the Labour Commission.
The resolution pointed out that while women suffered in time of war, they also undertook jobs which soldiers, who were away fighting, could not do and supported efforts to secure the safety and welfare of their countries.
[84] The rest of the delegation included Elisa Brătianu, wife of the Prime Minister of Romania Ion I. C. Brătianu;[73][39] Fannie Fern Andrews,[39] a Canadian-American teacher, pacifist,[85] and member of the Woman's Peace Party,[86] who founded the American School Peace League;[87] and Alice Schiavoni,[39] a member of the National Council of Italian Women (Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane).
[89] The delegates of the official peace conference refused to see women's citizenship and political agency as an international concern or one of human rights.
[94] Its governing documents also specified a woman delegate should be appointed to attend the International Labour Conference, whenever issues concerning women were to be discussed.
As the Soviet forces advanced on the territories held by Nazi Germany, they confiscated the records and took them to Moscow where they were housed in the KGB's secret Osobyi Archive [de] (Russian: Особый архив).
The documents were discovered in the early 1990s; glasnost and perestroika policy reforms eventually led to their repatriation to their respective countries of origin.
[101] These new studies into the Conference have shown that women were active participants in the peace process and desired to assume public roles in shaping the international policies at the end of the First World War.
The historian Glenda Sluga, a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities,[102] states that the participants saw "female self-determination as the corollary of the democratisation of nations".
