Abbreviations and Acronyms viii
Note on Translation and Transliteration xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction. Erasing the Past 1
Part I. Organizing Women under Socialism and Capitalism
1. State Feminism and the Woman Question 31
2. A Brief History of Women's Activism in Domestic Political
Context: Case 1: Bulgaria 53
3. Emancipated Women and Anticommunism in the American Political
Imagination 76
4. A Brief History of Women's Activism in Domestic Political
Context: Case 2: Zambia 97
5. Sandwiched between Superpowers 121
Part II. The Women's Cold War
6. The Lead-Up to International Women's Year 135
7. Historic Gatherings in Mexico and the German Democratic
Republic 146
8. Preparing for the Mid-Decade Conference 160
9. The Third Week in July 174
10. School of Solidarity 186
11. Strategizing for Nairobi 198
12. Showdown in Kenya 207
Conclusion. Phantom Herstories 221
Appendix. A Few Reflections on the Challenges of Socialist Feminist
Historiography 244
Notes 249
Selected Bibliography 283
Index 301
Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of eight books, including Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism, also published by Duke University Press, and most recently, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence.
"An engaging narrative of feminist movements during the Cold War. .
. . [Ghodsee's] work is vital in documenting a neglected component
of feminist history while illuminating a new resource for feminist
theorists and activists interested in thinking about the political
project of gender justice outside the confines of dominant,
Western, liberal feminism. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates
through faculty and professionals; general readers."
*Choice*
"Second World, Second Sex is a must read for anyone hoping to
understand the complexities of a global women’s rights movement
that goes beyond the boundaries of Western, liberal feminism."
*People's World*
"A powerful reminder that ultimately structural conditions are of
prime importance if women’s emancipation is to succeed. . . .
Ghodsee’s book ultimately reminds as, through the often moving
testimonies of former activists she has collected, that women’s
activism, also when attached to or even dominated the state, can be
effective and progressive."
*Twentieth-Century Communism*
"Interrogating why the activities of women in countries with strong
states promoting gender equality should be deemed inauthentic
vis-à-vis those in democracies that perpetuate patriarchal norms,
alongside rendering the Cold War as a battle between not just
capitalism and communism but also competing visions of feminism,
Second World, Second Sex is essential reading for anyone in any
field interested in women’s activism in the twentieth century."
*Slavic Review*
“Besides offering a masterful reconstruction of Cold War women’s
activism and East-South alliances, Second World, Second Sex
provides its readers with extensive and previously uncovered
historical documentation, together with important methodological
reflections on feminist knowledge production. The book will be of
great interest for historians of gender, transnationalism, and the
Cold War, and will undoubtedly expand the scope of scholarly
research on transnational women’s and feminist history.”
*American Historical Review*
“The Cold War’s end has seen the vision and achievements of the
socialist women’s activists marginalized, devalued, and almost
forgotten, the neoliberal consensus quickly undoing in the East and
South many of the rights which had been so dearly won. Ghodsee
articulates a concern that powerful forces in the West still
conspire to suppress or delegitimize histories that take state
socialist women’s activism seriously…. Ghodsee’s persistence and
peerless scholarship have ensured that it will not be allowed to
disappear from the mainstream narratives of feminism.”
*Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute*
"Second World, Second Sex has to be strongly recommended not only
to scholars in Slavic studies, feminist, gender and postcolonial
studies, as well as international relations, but to all those who
have high expectations of the current trend of re/connecting the
feminist and the climate change movements, as well as the new
global actions combating inequality, racism and violence against
women and girls, as necessary actions to restore the political
relevance to transnational women’s organizing efforts, as was the
case in the 1970s and 1980s.”
*Wagadu*
“Ghodsee beautifully describes the relationships that she
established with women’s activists throughout the course of her
research.... This is why her book is so important: it challenges
hegemonic accounts of both Cold War politics and the international
Decade for Women.”
*American Ethnologist*
“Ghodsee makes her argument skillfully and with clarity. . . . This
is an impressively ambitious book with an undeniably original topic
and a bold argument.”
*International Review of Social History*
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