An ideology of sisterhood?: American women's movements between nationalism and transnationalism

Abstract

This article aims to understand the deep roots of the contemporary breakdown of the paradigm of the so-called ‘global sisterhood’, of which the American women movements constitute an interesting case-study. In particular, this article explores the ways in which American female thought and activism have interwoven discourses of nation with the concepts of sisterhood and motherhood, in their universal sense, within a context that is both national and transnational. Even if the interactions in terms of race, class and ethnicity are taken into account, the article emphasizes the need to privilege the analysis of the experience of the white middle-class women involved in the women's rights and social reform movements from the American Revolution to the end of the 1960s, considering the 1970s as a turning point from both political and theoretical perspectives.