Abstract: Accounts of the United Nations International Women’s Year (IWY) have often depicted a tripartite division in which the West, East, and Third World advanced divergent definitions of the problems of women and disagreed bitterly over solutions and priorities. The World Conference of the IWY, held in Mexico City in June 1975, has thus been recounted in terms of a “showdown” between “western feminists” and “Third World women.” This article examines the IWY from the vantage point of Ghana—a former British colony that was firmly aligned with the Third World bloc in 1975. We locate Ghanaians’ engagements with the IWY in a longer trajectory of historically contingent and competing claims to know, organize, and represent women. We argue that these representational struggles can be best understood via an interscalar analysis, which identifies how conflicts across global blocs were closely connected to and shaped by in-country contestation, and vice versa.

Abstract: How can questions about honor and shame practices—so usefully employed by scholars of the Middle East and Mediterranean—shed fresh light on American family planning jurisprudence? The following argues that the privacy rights on which the landmark US Supreme Court decisions Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade were based participated in honor and shame practices because they asserted the rights of the modern state to shield women’s sexuality from public view. Historians of modern Egypt have established how the state can co-opt customary behaviors to act as a patriarchal protector and preserve a gendered social order. By comparing changes in the United States to those in Egypt, this article identifies a broader analytical framework for interpreting mid-twentieth-century claims regarding women’s rights and establishes how the state can also claim rights in the name of progress—a different view of justice than securing individual liberties.

Abstract: This article examines the intellectual and organizational history of a Black-led, women-of-color collective called the Seattle Third World Women (STWW), active from 1971 to 1976. Tracing the ideological origins of the group, this article begins with founder Mary Ellen Stone’s radicalization in Cuba and the Third World Women’s Alliance, one of the first multiracial feminist organizations of the 1970s. It then explores how Stone spearheaded an affiliated branch in the Pacific Northwest, which followed the alliance’s ideological tenets but implemented these ideas appropriate to local community needs. Whether hosting consciousness-raising sessions or circulating the group’s newsletters, STWW members bridged Black, Asian, Chicana/o, and Native American Seattleites’ political activities to global decolonization and antiwar movements and inserted gender-conscious approaches to radical solidarity practices. In excavating the STWW from the margins of historical inquiry, this article complicates dominant narratives of where US–Third World activism takes place and who leads these movements.

Abstract: This article explores the historical experiences of women in precolonial maritime Asia through conceptualizing port marriage, a popular practice that refers to a temporary and contractual union between male sojourners (mainly sailors and merchants) and Indigenous women in the discussed region. It first examines Ibn Battuta’s experiences of entering into and dissolving four marriages in the Maldives and then analyzes Chinese and European historical sources originating from various parts of maritime Asia to demonstrate the extensive and enduring practice of port marriage. It argues that port marriage was characterized by elements such as two-sided voluntary unions, contractual agreements, loyalty, and reciprocal advantages. Nevertheless, Chinese literati critically evaluated this maritime practice to showcase the masculinity of Chinese men and the magnificence of Chinese civilization. The study of port marriage breaks maritime boundaries, brings women into maritime history, and sheds new insights on the cultural dynamics of maritime Asia.

Abstract: This article explores the situation of Jewish women on the eastern home front (the Kingdom of Poland and the Pale of Settlement, which were part of the Russian Empire, and Habsuburg Galicia) during World War I. Drawing on welfare organizations’ reports and press, it argues that the character of the Jewish economic, marital, and migratory patterns challenged the survival of Jewish women during the war. Moreover, because of Jewish concentration in the areas mostly devastated by war and occupation—trade and artisanry—Jewish women could not take advantage of the absence of men, replacing them in the labor market, potentially strengthening their social position and claim for emancipation, as happened in western Europe.

Abstract: Black newspaper advice columnist “Naomi” and her single female correspondents in Norfolk, Virginia, in the 1940s show how Black women navigated the modern youth-controlled dating system. They feared vulnerability—being “made fools of” by young Black men empowered by rising wartime employment and military service. Naomi did not directly challenge male dominance but urged young women to play the field, maintain emotional distance from men, act self-interestedly, obey parents, and get educated. Most notably, she and her correspondents openly criticized men, illuminating the concept of “love and trouble” between African American men and women. These newspaper exchanges show young Black women’s distinctive sensibilities and concerns and document how a local female authority figure, without rejecting prevailing gendered conventions, helped young women cope with men’s power and try to circumvent their gendered disadvantages.