Ideological Crossroads: Feminism, Pacifism, and Socialism

This book chapter in in the edited volume Borderlines: Genders and Identities in War and Peace, 1870-1930 explores female opposition against the First World War and its legacy. Women's opposition to World War I has been documented and idealized in the search for origins and role models for present-day feminist pacifism. The war has thus become the pivotal point in the study of feminism and pacifism, while the interwar years have been examined mainly for the effect female suffrage had on feminism. But, as this article argues, the roots of postwar feminism lie in the prewar period, and the effect of the war on feminism can be fully comprehended only by examining the prewar and postwar period as a continuum. In the case of Germany it is also crucial to consider the impact of the November Revolution of 1918 on the development of feminist ideas between the two world wars.