Author:
Ripa, Yannick, and Françoise Thébaud. Les féminismes: une histoire mondiale 19e-20e siècles. Paris: Textuel, 2024.
and
Virgili, Fabrice, and Camille Noûs. Femmes contre le changement: conservatisme, réaction et extrémisme en Europe, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle. Archives du féminisme. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2024.
We’ve reached the end of Women’s History Month, and I hope many of you enjoyed our virtual and classic book displays, as well as our Library Café. Among the titles featured in these initiatives, Les féminismes: une histoire mondiale 19e-20e siècles stands out as particularly captivating.
A hefty 300-page volume bound in purple cloth, this book offers a sweeping historical overview of feminism. As the back cover states, it presents “100 stories, 300 archival images, two centuries of fights and debates,” edited by historians Yannick Ripa and Françoise Thébaud. In their introduction, they highlight how Western historiography tends to frame feminism through a Western lens. Instead, the book’s 37 contributors paint a more nuanced, global picture. Its periodization considers the diverse and context-specific manifestations of feminism—or féminismes—while critically addressing intersections with racism, colonialism, and elitism.
It’s difficult to pick just a few examples from its four chapters:
- Feminist rise at the time of revolutions (1789-1870)
- Feminism gets organized on a national and international scale (1870-1920)
- Feminism goes global (1920-1970)
- Campaigning for women’s freedom (1970-2000)
Vigdis Finnbogadottir
Among the European entries, I enjoyed reading about Avra Theodoropoulou (1880-1963), a polyglot and pacifist musicologist who promoted the League of Nations and founded both the League for Woman’s Rights and the Little Entente of Women. I discovered an entry on Libreria delle Donne in Milan, Italy’s first feminist bookshop (akin to Libreria delle donne di Firenze). I also learned about Iceland’s Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (b. 1930), who, in 1980, became the world’s first democratically elected female president—not only serving three consecutive terms but also championing environmental causes, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Beyond Europe, several figures left a lasting impression. The life of Savitribai Phule (1831-1897), a pioneer of India’s feminist movement, was particularly striking—she fought caste and gender discrimination at a time when both were deeply entrenched. In Turkey, novelist Halide Edib (1884-1964) was an advocate for women’s rights, a Turkish nationalist, and a controversial figure in the forced assimilation of orphans from the Armenian genocide. The book also explores feminism in the French West Indies, particularly the role of the Nardal’s sisters (we recently acquired a book about them). Another section details Japan’s ūman ribu movement of the 1970s, an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal feminist uprising. There’s also an entry on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangarĩ Maathai (1940-2011) and her Green Belt Movement, which empowered women through reforestation initiatives in Kenya.
Cover of Femmes contre le changement
With its wide scope and striking illustrations, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of feminism.
That said, if I may (slightly) break the theme of this series of blogposts, I’d like to suggest a second book to complement the first one: Femmes contre le changement: conservatisme, réaction et extrémisme en Europe, XVIIIe-XXIe siècles. This collection of essays, reminding me of an opinion piece written by EUI fellow Costanza Hermanin in 2022, delves into the often-overlooked role of conservative women in history. The contributors explore cases where women combined feminist demands with right-wing ideologies, such as the defense of moral order. The political engagement of conservative, reactionary, and extremist women remains a historiographical blind spot, which this book examines within both national and transnational contexts from the 18th to the 21st century.
Les féminismes: une histoire mondiale 19e-20e siècles is classified at 305.4209 (social role and status of women, history).
Femmes contre le changement: conservatisme, réaction et extrémisme en Europe, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle is classified at 940.0082 (history of Europe, women).