Gendering Twentieth-Century Humanitarianism: An Introduction

Abstract

The introduction argues for considering gender systematically as a category of research on the history of humanitarianism. So far, those scholars who have addressed gender have largely limited themselves to highlighting individual women’s contributions to humanitarian movements or to problematizing how men and women are depicted in humanitarian representations and narratives. The authors therefore argue for a more systematic integration of gender historians’ findings in the domains of the history of care and the role of gender in wars and conflicts. They then present the three main aspects that they consider to be highly relevant for studying the complex relationship between gender and humanitarianism in the twentieth century: masculinities and femininities in humanitarian discourse and practice, gender and the politics of humanitarianism, and the power of gendered representations.