As recently as the 1980s, the feminist movement still had the face of a white, middle-class woman from the rich West who demanded equal participation in politics and the economy and saw the principal cause of discrimination to be the domination of the patriarchy. Nevertheless, feminist scholars from the so-called Third World have shown that the women’s movement was also active in other corners of the world, and that it had its own agenda. They have pointed out the frequently unequal relationships between feminists from the richer West and the poorer Global South, thus challenging the smooth tale of transnational sisterhood.1 Research conducted after the fall of the Berlin Wall further complicated the image of power relations within international women’s movements. This introduced the activism of women from countries of the former Eastern Bloc onto the map of global feminisms, highlighting the divergent sources of women’s oppression in socialist and capitalist countries, as well as suggesting different ideas on how to overcome gender inequalities.2

Kristen Ghodsee, an American anthropologist who has been researching the situation of women in socialist and post-socialist Bulgaria for many years, goes even further in an effort to enrich our understanding of relations within international women’s movements in her study. She sheds light on mutual contacts between left feminists from former Eastern Bloc countries and developing countries from the Global South, formed in the confrontation with the interests of feminists from the capitalist West. In discussing the interactions between women’s activists from socialist Bulgaria and Zambia, Ghodsee first of all reminds us of the socialist programs that aimed to wipe out gender inequalities. Second, she reveals how the cooperation of activists from the Eastern Bloc and developing countries looked in practice. Third, she shows the clandestine mechanisms of the superpowers’ nuclear arms race and how they appropriated the women’s rights agenda. Finally, she analyzes the process of changes in the leadership of the global women’s movement in the post-WWII period.

The first part of the book discusses the situation of women in Bulgaria and in Zambia and the actions taken to secure their rights. Here, the counterbalance for the socialist emancipation agenda was the postulates of American feminism, clearly tied to the politics of subsequent US governments. The second part focuses on women’s activism in connection with the celebrations of the International Women’s Year (1975) and the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–85).

In the first part, Ghodsee addresses the nearly forgotten socialist concepts of emancipation and the achievements of socialism with regard to women’s rights. Recalling the place of women’s rights in the superpowers’ nuclear arms race, she lists the names and achievements of left female activists who did not so much disappear from the collective memory on their own, but rather were consciously erased and omitted from the processes of producing knowledge about the history of the global women’s movement. In this part, the author also revises the popular stereotype according to which the activity of women’s organizations was strictly subordinated to the policies of the state only in socialist countries. Using the example of American feminists’ struggles with the administrations of successive presidents, Ghodsee shows that under both socialism and capitalism the women’s movement was for those in power, on the one hand, a tool in their broader arsenal and, on the other hand, a conscious expression of their interests.

In the second part of the book, the author discusses the actions for women’s rights taken internationally by the representatives of socialist, capitalist, and developing countries in organizations such as the United Nations and the Women’s International Democratic Federation in the last two decades of the Cold War. Ghodsee’s detailed analysis of the documents, their circulation, and work on them on the official level as well as behind the scenes, reveals how complicated the diplomatic efforts around the women’s issues were. Ghodsee works on historical documents, but her great strength as an anthropologist is in the use of oral history. She explores the transcripts of meetings, reports, and official correspondence, but also follows behind-the-scenes activities and private communication, showing that heated battles were fought about almost every phrase. For example, one particularly contentious battle was over the provisions condemning apartheid in South Africa or Israel’s policies toward Palestine (pp. 150–52; 174–76; 209–10; 212–13).

Thorough analyses of the preparations for and the course of the three main conferences during the Decade for Women – in Mexico City (1975), Copenhagen (1980), and Nairobi (1985) – allow the author to trace the processes of the struggle for leadership in the global women’s movement. Ghodsee captures the Eastern Bloc representatives’ gradual loss of influence and the growing importance of Western activists under the aegis of the USA. She points out that American activists and politicians began to set the tone for the global women’s movement in the early 1980s thanks to their financial resources and the expansive policy of the USA. Her analysis shows that a symbolic change came with the political and financial reshuffling, including in the area of remembrance. Western feminists have managed to not only erase the contribution of socialist female activists in shaping post-war emancipation policies but have also created the impression that there is no alternative to the agenda of liberal feminism. Thus, this inspiring book not only brings up a forgotten fragment in the history of the global women’s movement but also reminds us of the existence of various feminist programs and the constant clash between them, nowadays transferred into the area of historical memory, as well as of the production of historical knowledge.

What concerns me a bit, however, is the book’s consolidation of the dichotomous image of the global women’s movement. That is, it draws a thick line between the socialist bloc and the developing countries on the one hand, and the Western capitalist countries under American leadership on the other. The author emphasizes that in some cases, such as in reproductive rights, there were cracks or even frictions between socialist and developing countries – here, between Bulgaria and Zambia. However, the polarizing perspective she adopts leads to blurring the differences within individual blocs, including overlooking the axes of domination between the Eastern Bloc and the Global South. It also homogenizes the image of the Western women’s movement, which here has the face of American liberal feminism, as a hostage to the internal power plays and imperialist ambitions of the USA.

Along with its great critical power, Ghodsee’s book also has a slight mythologizing feature – it paints a picture of sisterhood and the solidarity of left activists from the countries of the so-called Second and Third World, standing shoulder to shoulder against Western feminists led by the Americans. In this picture, the issue of the unequal distribution of knowledge and power between the Second and Third World is obscured. For example, this issue is evident in the fact that in the area of women’s rights, the representatives of developing countries were mainly the recipients of good socialist practices provided by the representatives of the Eastern Bloc.

The connections between the Second and Third World are a subject that requires more research, which is already underway in other areas such as the exchange of students and higher education staff between the Eastern Bloc and the Global South.3 Tracing the construction and distribution of knowledge about women’s emancipation programs and practices between the countries of the Eastern Bloc and developing countries will undoubtedly make it possible to further complicate the picture of mutual relations within the global women’s movement and to look at the world map of actions for women’s rights from yet another angle.

Notes:
1 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Under Western Eyes. Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, in: Feminist Review 30 (1988), pp. 61–88; Uma Narayan, Dislocating Cultures. Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism, New York 1997.
2 Magdalena Grabowska, Bringing the Second World In. Conservative Revolution(s), Socialist Legacies, and Transnational Silences in the Trajectories of Polish Feminism, in: Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37 (2012), 2, pp. 385–411.
3 Mariya Ivancheva, Paternalistic Internationalism and (De)colonial Practices of Cold War Higher Education Exchange. Bulgaria’s Connections with Cuba and Angola, in: Journal of Labor and Society 22 (2019), 4, pp. 733–748.