The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has a unique role in post-war peace activism. It is the longest-surviving international women's peace organization and one of the oldest peace organizations in the West. It was founded in 1915, when a group of women from countries
fighting in World War I met at The Hague to formulate proposals for ending the war. The organization sent delegations of women to several countries to plead for peace, and their final resolutions are credited with influencing Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points. Today, the organization counts several
thousand members in 36 countries, on five continents. Since 1948, it has enjoyed consultative status with the UN, and it was instrumental in bringing about recent United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security.
Beginning in 1945, WILPF began identifying the
limitations of its ideological foundations in relation to the international liberal order. Confortini argues that this period ushered in a turn in the organization's policies and activism, one that lasted until the mid-70s and served as an important antecedent to feminist activism that continues
today. By tracing the organization's changing strategies and ideas over a thirty-year period, Intelligent Compassion seeks to answer to what extent activists can transcend the prevailing practices of their eras. Confortini argues that this history is important theoretically because it inspires the
development of a critical constructivist theory of agency that advances the agent-structure debate in International Relations theory.
List of Acronyms
1. What is Feminist Peace?
2. Feminist Critical Methodology, Peace and Social Change
3. "Evidence of Things Unseen": WILPF and Disarmament
4. What is Violence? WILPF and Decolonization
5. Orientalism and Peace: WILPF in the Middle East
6. Conclusion:
Feminist Ways to Peace
Epilogue
Bibliography
There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.
Catia Cecilia Confortini is Lecturer in Peace and Justice Studies at the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, Wellesley College.
Making Sense in the Social Sciences - Margot Northey, Lorne Tepperman and Patrizia Albanese
Approaches to Peace A Reader in Peace Studies - David P. Barash
Doing Feminist Theory - Dr. Susan A. Mann
The New World of UN Peace Operations - Thorsten Benner, Stephan Mergenthaler and Philipp Rotmann
On the Law of Peace - Christine Bell
