From Rosie the Riveter to the global Assembly Line: American Women on the World Stage

Abstract

In 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe, American pacifist and feminist Emily Greene Balch wrote from Geneva to colleagues in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) about their plight. Ringed around by a wall of violence, we draw closer together (i). It was a hopeful statement about organizational and gen der solidarity in the face of impending doom, but it can perhaps also serve as a foreshadowing of the ways that, in the more than half century since the end of World War II, women across the conti nents have at times been able to make connections across national differences to confront common problems, includ ing gendered violence. From a twenty first century vantage point, we can look back over the decades and see how inti mately connected the changes in Ameri can women's lives have been with events