Notions of the Future in Transnational Women's and Feminist Movements, 1970-2000
Women’s and feminist movements have not only always been transnational but emerged with the intention to radically transform society. Women's movements and feminist actors of the 20th century had explicit or implicit ideas of what the future should or should not look like. In the form of utopian as well as dystopian visions, hopes, and aspirations, they criticized and politicized different forms of oppression; and, consequently, inspired and incited political and social change. The formulation of visions of the future by feminist and women actors thus represent social and political acts that when studied as historical phenomena enable deeper insights into the social and political lives of these actors. The dissertation project aims to examine the notions of the future(s) of transnational women and feminist actors by looking not only looking their concrete future ideas but also at the contested making of these notions and the power relations and practices connected to them. The project takes a global and decolonial perspective. It aims to counteract the conceptualization of previous research that often concentrates, on the one hand, on a national framework of investigation, and, on the other hand, on Western European as well as US-American actors. By limiting the framework of investigation in this manner, previous studies neglected to examine women’s organizations and activists from socialist, Eastern European countries as well as from less industrialized countries of the so-called ‚Global South‘. Consequently, this project examines notions of the future of transnationally networked women by looking at actors coming from different regions and socio-economic contexts that met at different international women's conferences between 1975 and 1995. Specifically, I examine transnationally networked local movements such as the Philippines women’s movement, international organizations such as the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), or transnational networks such as Development Alternatives for Women within A New Era (DAWN). Overall, this project contributes to the history of multiplicity of women’s and feminist struggles and strives for a critical global and feminist history of the future(s).
