Prof. Dr. Sibylle Marti, SNSF Starting Grant project
Between the mid-1980s and the early 21st century, various transnational women’s networks were founded. They brought together activists from the global North and South and became the most important organisations within the transnational women’s movement. These non-governmental and non-profit women’s networks influenced global debates on the environment, health, labour, and development in the 1990s. In doing so, they shaped knowledge on current issues such as the gender-specific consequences of climate change, sexual and reproductive rights, and the underestimated labour and economic contributions of women. However, their important role has hardly been addressed in previous historical accounts about the 1990s.
By focusing on women’s transnational political activism, the research project sheds new light on the global 1990s. It examines how transnational women’s networks rose to become important political actors and knowledge producers in the 1990s, and it analyses the strategies used by transnational women’s networks to put gender-specific perspectives on issues such as sustainable development, reproductive health, and informal employment on the agenda of international organisations and conferences. In doing so, the research project highlights how transnational women’s networks incorporated previously neglected forms of knowledge into their activism. These included, for example, concepts and findings from feminist economics, but also testimonies and experiences of less privileged women, especially from the global South. The research project not only sheds light on the political visions and fields of action of transnational women’s networks, but also examines the challenges, controversies, and setbacks that the transnational women’s movement faced as early as the 1990s.
