Transnational Work Research Articles

Language varieties and labor mobilities

Abstract While language is clearly an important aspect of (labor) migration, there have not been many contemplations and interrogations, although truly compelling and necessary, on language varieties and their place and position in labor migration and transnational work in the contemporary world, and hence why we intend to do so in this article. In our paradigmatic analysis of language varieties in the context of labor mobilities, we shall take the case of the varieties of English arising from the global spread of the language worldwide as our focal point. The world Englishes paradigm thus greatly informs and substantiates our discussion so we shall first give the principles of this paradigm shift in linguistics begun by Braj Kachru. We subsequently connect world Englishes theorizing to labor migration practices. We shall argue that language is not only integral to the work being done by migrants, but is actually the work in itself. A consequence of this is that there are language varieties and Englishes which fit the work to be done more than others, and, therefore, these varieties and Englishes are becoming commodified as well in labor migration. We shall also take a look at the structural ramifications of labor migration on Englishes, how these new varieties are restructured further as they move from one place to another along with labor migrants. As it will become apparent, our discussion covers the situation of labor migrants in precarity more than the hyper-mobile elites often privileged in migratory contexts. Ultimately, we shall synthesize issues relating to language varieties in the context of transnational work and propose strategies in dealing not only with multilingual but also language-varietal diversity in (labor) migrations and mobilities.

The Impact of English Language Development on Internationalization of Education

In the era of globalization, the development of the English language plays a pivotal role in international education. This paper explores the profound impact of English language development on international education, with a particular emphasis on its roles in culture, talent development, cross-cultural exchange, and collaborative initiatives. Firstly, English not only serves as a universal means of communication but also enhances the cross-cultural understanding, fostering global cultural exchange. Secondly, as an international lingua franca, English contributes to the cultivation of talents required in the globalized workforce, enabling individuals to excel in transnational work environments. Additionally, English plays a critical role in cross-cultural communication and cooperation, facilitating effective collaboration among individuals from diverse linguistic backgrounds, and driving the implementation of international educational programs. Lastly, English serves not just as a tool but also as a gateway to international resources, including academic materials, job opportunities, and cultural experiences, profoundly influencing academic and career development.

“Navigating the In-Between: A Cross-Cultural Researcher’s Fluid Positionality in West Africa”

This article explores the challenges and complexities of a cross cultural PhD student conducting research in West Africa. I discuss how I navigated, negotiated and blurred my insider/outsider experiences as a Congolese-American woman as I engaged with themes oscillating between power, legitimacy, language, gender, and my decolonial and social justice commitments. Reflexive research on Africans studying a secondary non-native African country is seldom discussed or researched. As such, I utilised an intersectional transnegritude theoretical framework to centre and complicate the shared transcolonial struggles and neocolonial realities of myself and my participants. I conclude by positing that, despite the challenges of doing transnational work, reflexively recognising our positionality lends to a liberatory and critical transnational exchange that encourages new approaches to knowledge production for social justice. This article contributes to ongoing discussions of insider/outsider research, positionality, decolonising research, and comparative case study to articulate and dearticulate power dynamics in neocolonial contexts.

S5-4 Aquatic literacy for a lifelong safe and fun engagement in aquatic activities

Abstract Development Aquatic literacy (AL), emerging from the broader concept of physical literacy and translated to the aquatic environment, comes close to the concept of water competence. Water competence is described as a broad spectrum of competencies required to effectively help to prevent drowning by integrating the physical competencies with the cognitive and affective. Dudley (2019) explains the learning’ in aquatic environments from a physical literacy perspective, describing four dimensions: psychomotor, cognitive, affective, and social aspects. In aquatic literacy special attention is given to positive motivation to engage in aquatic recreation, considering the degree to which individuals have been privileged or restrained for different aquatic activities in a variety of contexts. The European project “Aquatic literacy for all Children” or ALFAC aims to improve the quality of aquatic education, in order to prepare them to take part in wide range of water sports while at the same time protect children from the dangers looking for balanced ‘challenges’. Implementation Developing children's aquatic skills, motivation, enjoyment, engagement, and confidence will be studied in seven European countries. The target group consists of elementary school children. An international database, enabling situating the level of children on the basis of reference values is a valuable tool for pedagogues, researchers and institutional actors whose aim is to improve swimming education systems. Evaluation & Dissemination The objective of building a standardized set of tests and a common evaluation will allow to build the foundations of a transnational work that will have repercussions on the national plans of aquatic recreation in general and school swimming in particular. The three elements of the Personal Assets Framework are inspiring for the educational approach in aquatics: (a) personal engagement in activities, (b) quality social dynamics, and (c) appropriate settings. Conclusion With ALFAC a pragmatic but evidence based international AL measurement tool will be created enabling to identify the most relevant areas of progress in aquatic education. It will offer educational resources proposing tasks, technical content, and educational support to help individual children and groups in their progress of AL.

The Hurricane network: District takeover and neoliberal reconstruction in the emerging ‘global city’

ABSTRACT This article traces the state takeover and neoliberal reconstruction of a mid-size urban school district in the California Bay Area. Aligning with research on social networks in school reform, it identifies three organizational nodes of power operating within the takeover and post-takeover landscape: venture-philanthropic capital, the Teach for America organization, and a local intermediary organization that acted as a hub for the capital and labor flowing from these organizations. Their story demonstrates the concrete ways in which an increasingly globalized funding and policy network converged at the district level in order to implement a unified policy agenda. The network’s role in school politics, real estate, and gentrification provides a template for the transnational work of school reformers and their role in creating the neoliberal ‘global city.’

TESOL Teacher Education in a Transnational World: Turning Challenges into Innovative Prospects [Review

[Initial paragraphs] TESOL teacher education is, at its core, a set of practices that involve collaboration and interaction among individuals from various cultural, linguistic, and national backgrounds. It could be argued that its transnational aspect is a defining feature, which has become increasingly apparent in recent years. Transnationalism can be broadly understood as a process and practice of maintaining multiple connections between individuals and institutions that span nation-state borders (Vertovec, 2009). With English playing a pivotal role in mediating and shaping these connections, language educators have the responsibility to prepare students for participation in a globalized world with an awareness of its cultural and linguistic diversity. This raises a set of challenging questions about how transnationalism affects teacher knowledge formation, how teachers understand their work in the context of transnationalism, and what TESOL teacher education can do to prepare teachers for the challenges of transnational work. The book TESOL Teacher Education in a Transnational World: Turning Challenges into Innovative Prospects, edited by Osman Z. Barnawi and Anwar Ahmed, is a timely response to these questions. In addressing them, the editors bring together the diverse perspectives of scholars on the complexities of transnationalism in relation to teacher education.

For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández

Reviewed by: For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938 by Sonia Hernández Gabriela González For a Just and Better World: Engendering Anarchism in the Mexican Borderlands, 1900—1938. By Sonia Hernández. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021. Pp. 256. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) Sonia Hernández's masterful study examines labor activism and explains the conditions that inspired workers to see anarcho-syndicalism as a path toward justice. By centering the stories and contributions of activist leaders such as Caritina Piña Montalvo, the book highlights the gendered nature of anarchism in the Mexican borderlands during the early twentieth century. Identifying Piña as "transnational labor broker" (2), Hernández takes the reader on a journey into the world that shaped the lives and ideologies of Mexicana anarchists such as organizing pioneers Luz Mendoza, Isaura Galvan, Reinalda González Parra, and later Piña. These women connected the dots of worker struggles in their own back yards with the challenges of workers around the world to claim and defend their human rights. Operating from the Gulf of Mexico region and invested in the local dynamics of the Tampico-Villa Cecilia area of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Piña nevertheless formed an integral part of a global nexus that found her writing in defense of workers in faraway places, such as Mexicana textile workers on strike in Gastonia, North Carolina. She did this in her capacity as secretary of correspondence of the Comité Internacional Pro-Presos Sociales, an organization dedicated to helping political prisoners. Anarchist ideas found fertile ground in a Gulf of Mexico region whose export orientation tethered it to a global economy heavily invested in oil production. Thus, the region served as a magnet for a diverse array of migrants from Mexico and around the world who were attracted to economic opportunities but also to the principle of reciprocity associated [End Page 591] with mutual aid societies. Industrialization's success hinged on the working masses, and with them came ideas and prospects for labor organizing. But as the Gastonia intervention reveals, for Mexicana activists, "the anarchist ideal of a nationless world" (3) nurtured their sense of solidarity with all workers, whether in Tamaulipas, the United States, or elsewhere. Thus, from their home communities, Piña and other activists, through an impressive anarchist print culture and correspondence, felt resonance and connection with Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World, and Casa del Obrero Mundial labor organizers many miles away. One of the most compelling elements of this book is its focus on transnational feminism or femenismo transfronterizo, centering theorist Gloria Anzaldùa's intersectional framework engaging race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality and "promoting worker unity free from state control." Hernández adds geography to the mix, reminding us that while it is critical to understand how Mexicana activists took part in a transnational workers liberation project, they also shaped local histories. These local histories stretch into the Texas-Tamaulipas border area from where early Magonista ideas existed in tandem with a developing anarcho-feminist agenda that promoted equality of the sexes. Because the women of the PLM and other radical organizations did not exist in a sexist-free world, the rhetoric of gender equity in anarcho-syndicalist circles created opportunities for women activists to challenge the sexism that inhabited even progressive organizations. Part of the brilliance of this book is how it demonstrates Caritina Piña's anarcho-feminism even as it highlights her use of maternalism to advance an agenda for labor rights. In this context, motherhood, a concept used by the Mexican state in its national unity narrative, does double duty as the anarchist driver for a call to action focused on the need for women to participate in the labor struggle. Within the context of this revolutionary motherhood, women activists could claim equality with men as they who reproduce the fighters, the defenders of families and communities. Ultimately, Piña's political usage of motherhood is described by Hernández as anarcho-maternalism, for it "directly challenged the state as the primary guarantor of women's rights" centering instead women themselves as the...

Highly Skilled Migration Flows: A Case Study of Taiwan

The largest type of international migration is the movement of people from developing to developed countries. This extensive global migration has raised concerns of brain drain, where highly skilled students and professionals leave their home countries and never return. While highly skilled migration may indeed create a brain drain, it simultaneously promotes the development of the home country. This paper uses the case study of Taiwan to demonstrate that the emigration of highly skilled individuals enhances the development of the sending country through return migration, transnational workers, and diaspora networks. To analyze the impacts that migration has had on the development of Taiwan, regression techniques are implemented. The empirical findings of the paper show that once transnational networks were developed, migration outflows led to an increase in the overall output of Taiwan.

Living transnational lives: Languages, education and senses of belonging across three generations of a Greek-German bilingual family

In this article, we explore how migrant families interpret their lives, their selves and their senses of belonging against the background of transnational work, education and language trajectories. Drawing on a biographical approach and interviews with three generations of the same Greek-German bilingual family, our results show the process of deinstitutionalisation of Greek language education across the generations, which is replaced by practices of ‘doing heritage’, i.e. forms of linguistic and cultural education in the private sphere of the family. While the orientation of the interview partner of the first generation is towards remigration to Greece, the interview partner of the second generation is closest to having developed a ‘transnational disposition of the mind’ (Casinader, 2018, p. 16). The interview partner of the third generation is oriented towards permanent settlement and career stability in Germany. These findings are discussed against the background of socio-historic relations between Germany and Greece.

Mapping Oysters and Making Oceans in the Northern Indian Ocean, 1880–1906

AbstractAt the turn of the twentieth century, most of the world’s pearls were extracted from rich oyster and coral reefs on the northern Indian Ocean rim. This paper returns to the sites of extraction, studying imperial maps made from 1889–1925 to delineate oyster reefs on the seafloor. Building from the submarine up, I draw on environmental, animal, and history of science studies to explore the work of mapping oceanic, animate space. Attending to the role of divers, whose labor was required to make the seafloor visible, and the lifecycles of oysters, which changed over time, I argue that the seafloor represents a kind of unruly terrain, out of both the reach and control of imperial authorities. The paper’s final section meditates on reading humans as part of Indian Ocean landscapes and the possibilities this offers for further comparative, transnational work in a materialist vein.

Between Transnational Socialism and White Privilege: Afrikaner Woman Worker’s ‘Library’ in the 1930s and 1940s

ABSTRACT In this article, I set out to introduce the Garment Workers Union (GWU) prose as a neglected part of Afrikaans-language literature. I offer an overview of texts written or translated by the GWU members and published in the official trade union organ Die Klerewerker/The Garment Worker. The presented workers’ reading list is divided into original Afrikaans writings and translations from English into Afrikaans. All these texts offered the newly created white working class a new identification, manoeuvring between belonging to the national imagined community of Afrikaners based on the concept of nation and whiteness, and to a transnational workers’ community based on the category of class. Looking at the impact of the Dutch and English language traditions in South Africa, I propose that the way in which European conventions made their way to Afrikaans literature, was class-based. Textsrecognized as artistic, incorporated in the Afrikaans literary canon, drew heavily on Dutch tradition. The English language turned out to be the medium that also circulated a less elitist thought. Therefore, it was English that enabled the movement of texts from Europe and the United States to South Africa that shaped the South African white working-class, including its Afrikaner part.

Temporary transnational labour mobility and gendered individualization in Europe

In a context of a new transnational division of labour, temporary international labour mobility is on the rise in Europe. In particular, recent decades have seen considerably more women seeking work experience abroad. Observers have been concerned with how such mobility is related to individualization, and in particular how it may challenge collective institutions, communities and families. The aim of this study is to explore such issues among women and men with international work experience. Using data from European Social Survey, the paper investigates previously mobile workers in terms of their current working and living conditions. Across genders, we consider different forms of individualization that may be associated with transnational labour mobility. While both women and men with transnational work experience generally feature strong strategic individualization, this is most pronounced among men. Hence, men's mobility is among other things associated with increased autonomy in working life, while – in contrast to women – it does not seem to hamper their integration in the sphere of social reproduction.

Cardiff and the contentious landscapes of postindustrial, urban, and transnational memory work

Since Cardiff became the Welsh capital in 1955 and the subsequent referendum placed the new Welsh Assembly Government in Cardiff Bay, the city’s grasp on a Welsh national narrative has only intensified. This paper approaches the various agents of memory work around the city through a landscape analysis to better understand the processes of Welsh memory at work in Cardiff. Furthermore, it focuses on Butetown, the historically multicultural docklands community of Cardiff, and its relationship with the old urban and civic core of the city and the new developments of Cardiff Bay. Butetown fuelled the coal industry which propelled Cardiff towards the wealthy capital and colonial enclave it is today yet continues to be excluded from Welsh national narratives. Redevelopment and gentrification further squeeze Butetown into an ever-smaller core of what it once was. This research indicates that while this resilient cosmopolitan culture continues in many forms, the context of (the) capital continues to complicate Cardiff and its shifting relationship with the history and culture of Welsh identity. By employing a flexible landscape analysis towards historical and ongoing urban development, the memory at work in cultural and political urban landscapes emerges amongst broader considerations of national identity.

The making of a skilled worker: the transnational mixed embeddedness of migrant workers

Migrant workers’ employment pathways are mainly analysed by observing their behaviour in receiving societies. In dialogue with critical studies of mobility, migration, and skill, we argue that the ‘transnational mixed embeddedness’ approach, used to analyse migrant businesses, should extend to include migrant workers. Based on multi-sited ethnography, we discuss the phenomenon of Chinese migrant workers in Italy who exploit the transnationally embedded opportunities to access training courses in China. We analyse the transnational workers’ agency in circumnavigating socially constructed notions of training and skill, and stress the transformative logic of the migrant trajectories as transnational mobility influences the trainees’ perspectives.

Black Women Activists: Embracing the Struggle for Intertwined Freedoms on Multiple Fronts

AbstractDorothy Cobble's magnificent, sweeping saga of the 100 plus year struggle for “full rights feminism” introduces us to myriad activists who sought common ground in the expansion of civil, political, economic and social rights as the key for raising the standard for working women, and by extension for all of humanity. However, as Cobble notes, some full-rights activists did not measure up to the potential of this feminism. The juxtaposition of the activism of Black full-rights feminists helps expose this fault line of unexamined deep-seated racism, ethnocentrism, and stereotypical thinking that undermined the potential of full-rights feminism. Questions of economic and political democracy shaped the organizing efforts of Black full-rights feminists against disfranchisement, lynching, discrimination in housing, education and employment, and exclusion and segregation from public accommodations. In their transnational work, they supported policies and practices structured by Cold War imperatives, American racism and imperialism, and tensions between democracy and incipient autocracy in the emerging African nations. Cobble's book demonstrates the crucial ways that Black activists working together and with white allies pushed for the expansive promise of full-rights feminism, encompassing both political and economic rights and race and gender justice.

"There Was No 'Family Planning Movement,' There Was Just Us": The Asociación Pro-Salud Maternal and Birth Control in 1960s Mexico

Beginning in 1958, Dr. Edris Rice-Wray established the Asociación Pro-Salud Maternal (Association for Maternal Health) clinics in Mexico where low-income women could explore family planning options. Using transnational collaborations to fund and supply contraception across the US-Mexico border, the asociación created space for women to claim their reproductive rights. The subsequent increased pressure from urban women, their priests, and their doctors for access to birth control forced the state to accommodate their needs by changing national family planning laws in 1974. This article examines the transnational work of Rice-Wray to reveal the political, religious, social, and economic challenges to birth control experienced by women in mid-twentieth-century Mexico.

Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights by Gabriela González

Reviewed by: Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights by Gabriela González Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights. By Gabriela González. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 261. Paper, $38.95, ISBN 978-0-19-090962-8; cloth, $115.00, ISBN 978-0-19-991414-2.) Against a backdrop of western expansion, legacies of conquest, and the modernization of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, Gabriela González illuminates a binational history of human and civil rights struggles led by ethnic Mexicans. Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights chronicles how fronterizo activists in Texas from varying class backgrounds drew on the promises—and paradoxes—of modernity to inform their cultural, political, and economic agendas. Though activists' goals varied, they shared a vision for the uplift of ethnic Mexicans, particularly the poor and working class who experienced dispossession and proletarianization following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As the author shows through bilingual archival research, "redeeming" Mexican people and culture in modernizing states was a complex task, which led some reformers to reinscribe racial and class hierarchies, while others looked to more radical politics. The first half of Redeeming La Raza examines activists who centered Mexican nationalism to discredit the "so-called Mexican Problem" by advocating for cultural redemption and searching for or imposing social stability among Mexicans between 1900 and 1929 (p. 58). Chapter 1 tackles these strategies in the context of gente decente (decent people) reformers, including the influential Idar family from Laredo, Texas. The second chapter shows the era's ideological diversity, as González traces the transnational work of liberals and anarchists who sought social change benefiting the Mexican masses. Chapter 3 centers on Leonor Villegas de Magnón, a fronteriza who organized and led medical and economic assistance initiatives during the Mexican Revolution. The second half of the study focuses on activism between 1930 and 1950. Chapters 4 and 5 show how reformers varied in gender and class consciousness. While the Munguías (chapter 4) fought for the uplift of Mexican people, they abided by traditional gender norms: Jose Rómulo Munguía Torres worked in the world of civic engagement and Carolina Malpica de Munguía in education. Emma Tenayuca (chapter 5) worked to improve the condition of working-class people as a communist organizer who fought for labor rights. The final chapter connects the legacies of gente decente reform efforts to the founding and development of LULAC. Throughout the chapters, González traces the evolution, transformation, and, at times, refusal of gente decente ideologies that animated transborder activism in the early twentieth century. She also gives critical attention to gender and its intersections with political development and involvement. González weaves the biographies of men and women enveloped in struggles for rights, and she shows, for example, how activists used "maternal feminism" (p. 3). Maternal feminism acknowledged the patriarchal ordering of society, while allowing women possibilities for organizing outside the home. González contributes to histories of race and ethnicity in the United States. Drawing on Benedict Anderson's work, González argues that "la raza" served as an "imagined community," a constructed, unified ethnic platform that [End Page 414] activists used to further their struggles for human and civil rights (p. 193). One limitation also rests at the nexus of race and ethnicity. Though the idea is not central to the project, Redeeming La Raza makes use of "Jaime Crow" as a Spanish-language transposition of the anti-Black Jim Crow era (p. 10). "Jaime Crow" is not explored for its connections to the nation's legacies of anti-Blackness, but rather serves as a nonanalytical, descriptive term. Further analysis and explication of the regional connections between such racial and ethnic projects are especially important for expanding histories of the U.S. South and Southwest. Overall, Redeeming La Raza is an excellent text that will be of great interest to borderlands and Mexican American historians. Those who research histories of civil rights, modernity, class, race, ethnicity, gender, and culture in a Mexico and/or U.S. context will also find it to be an invaluable addition to studies...

Assembling Transnational Policing: Europol’s Anticipatory Governance

ABSTRACT Building on studies of transnational policing, security and digitization, we develop an assemblage-theoretical framework to explore perceptions of time in contemporary policing efforts. We use the concepts of techno imaginaries and policing assemblage to examine the articulation of temporality and multi-scalar connections between humans and non-humans in policing, which has become increasingly pluralised and digitised. We draw on documentary research on Europol to analyse anticipatory governance in transnational police work, including the linkages between humans and machines and identify a shift from post-crime towards pre-crime interventions. We critically discuss the significance of this shift for the character and robustness of expected future risks and threat assessments. Our reflections on the interplay between time and techno imaginaries contribute to critical analyses of the ways in which decision-making and interventions shape and are shaped by transnational assemblages in anticipatory governance.

Labor exportation, transnational production politics, and the formation of exploitation relationships—a case study of Chinese migrant workers in Japan

In the context of globalization, the exporting of labor from developing countries to developed countries has shaped a relationship of exploitation between employers and employees. This study presents the case of Chinese migrant workers’ overtime pay in Japan and explores the formation mechanisms of exploitation using the analytical framework of “transnational production politics”. Transnational migrant workers often see overtime as an indispensable opportunity to generate extra income to support families back home. This need is being taken advantage of by employers who habitually reduce overtime pay or do not pay for overtime at all. Overtime pay often becomes a focal point of labor conflict. Because of the limited protections for migrant workers in the labor laws of host countries, the power granted to employers by the host country's labor system, competition from migrant workers of other nationalities, and the selective involvement of transnational intermediaries, Chinese migrants suffer a dilemma of either surrendering to low overtime pay or losing overtime work, or even their job altogether. Whether to resist or surrender, it seems that the outcome is all the same for migrant workers: they lose and employers win. This “transnational production” polity exercises its market authoritarianism. Elements such as the constraints of the foreign labor system, loopholes in the system used by employers, the global surplus labor supply, and the separation of the processes of labor maintenance and labor renewal in the mode of labor reproduction typical to migrant labor reflect the transnational production politics peculiar to international contract labor mobility. This becomes an important mechanism for the re-emergence of the forced exploitation of capital in developed capitalist countries. Unlike the exploitative relationship between local workers and employers in developed countries, the exploitation between migrant workers and employers is born out of imbalanced development between countries. Migrant workers not only have no access to protections afforded by the host country's welfare system, but also are controlled by strict laws regarding foreign labor and are threatened by competition from other migrant workers. All this has put employers in a strongly advantageous position in labor conflicts.

The WIDF's Work for Women's Rights in the (Post)colonial Countries and the “Soviet Agenda”

AbstractThe primary aim of this article is to problematize the WIDF's interpretations of the rights of women from (post)colonial countries and its tactics in working for and together with these women. It shows that, in the context of rapid geopolitical changes – the growing anti-colonial struggle and Cold War competition – the WIDF had to change its ideology, ways of working, and communication strategies in order to keep its leading position in transnational work for women's rights and to maintain the sympathies of women from countries outside Europe. The main focus is on the contradictions, negotiations, and adjustments inside the WIDF with respect to the new political situation and the demands of women from Africa and Asia, in particular, during the highest period of anticolonial transformation (1950s to early 1970s). This article also pays attention to Soviet ideas on the emancipation of women and, in particular, to the influence of Soviet experiences of emancipating women from non-Slavic (Eastern and Southern) parts of the USSR on the WIDF's perception of and policies for the improvement of the situation of women in Asia and Africa. This article is based primarily on analysis of the WIDF's archival documents preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) in Moscow, along with the WIDF's official publications.