Research note: The historiographical challenges of exploring Second World–Third World alliances in the international women’s movement

Abstract

Throughout the United Nations (UN) Decade for Women, world governments met three times in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1985) to discuss the status of the world’s women and produce conference documents that would serve as transnational road maps for improving women’s rights. Throughout the Decade, a coalition of women from the socialist bloc countries and women in the so-called nonaligned countries often joined together to isolate and antagonize Western feminists. These ‘Second World’–‘Third World’ coalitions perhaps shaped the political outcomes of the three women’s conferences, but today the history of the UN Decade is often written with an air of Western triumphalism, as if it was exclusively women from North America and Western Europe who championed women’s rights on the international stage. This research note specifically explores the transnational socialist solidarity networks that were forged between the Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement (CBWM) and women from Zambian United National Independence Party (UNIP) Women’s League between 1975 and 1985. It discusses the theoretical and logistical challenges of doing research to fill in these glaring historiographical gaps.