Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First World War

Sacramento State history professor Siegel (The Moral Disarmament of France) delivers a riveting study of the “unprecedented wave of female activism” sparked by the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that brought an end to WWI. Though activists failed to persuade American president Woodrow Wilson to endorse women’s suffrage as a plank in the peace accords, his vision of a “new liberal international order” inspired women all over the world to advocate for “social, economic, and political equality,” according to Siegel. She profiles African-American activists Mary Church Terrell and Ida Gibbs Hunt, who fought for racial justice in the U.S. and abroad; Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi, a leader in the Egyptian independence movement; Soumay Tcheng, who served as an official attaché to the Chinese delegation in Paris and played a key role in China’s refusal to sign the Versailles Treaty; and French activist Jeanne Bouvier, who advocated for the rights of working class women. Siegel vividly describes how the feminist activism kick-started in 1919 crossed national borders and racial and class divides and propelled the women’s rights movement through the rest of the 20th century. This sparkling, character-driven history will captive readers interested in the suffrage movement and feminist history. (Jan.)