FEMINISM

Carrie Chapman Catt, America's leading suffragist, helped organize the international suffrage movement in 1902. Feminists from developed nations met regularly to exchange strategies for winning the vote in their countries.

votes and pacifism

Beyond winning the vote the feminists wanted to mobilize womanpower, worldwide, to prevent or stop wars. In 1915, a year after the First World War began, Catt, Jane Addams and other leading feminists formed the Women's Peace Party. Women, it argued, were "the mother half of humanity." Maternal pacifists said motherhood gave women a unique biological, social, and political viewpoint through their relationship not just to men and children, but also to the nation and the world. They believed that motherhood legitimized and motivated the solidarity of all women in condemning war, and that whereas men had conflicting interests and ambitions, women all over the world shared concern for the creation and preservation of human life. Motherhood thus became a potent symbol for pacifists, as reflected in a popular song of 1915, "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier."

In 1915 Addams and other pacifists joined Henry Ford's venture to plead directly with the belligerents for peace. President Woodrow Wilson, recognizing the influence of the peace movement, presented American entry into the …