ABOUT THIS BOOK

Women from the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe—what used to be called the Second World—once dominated women’s activism at the United Nations, but their contributions have been largely forgotten or deemed insignificant in comparison with those of Western feminists. In Second World, Second Sex Kristen Ghodsee rescues some of this lost history by tracing the activism of Eastern European and African women during the 1975 United Nations International Year of Women and the subsequent Decade for Women (1976-1985). Focusing on case studies of state socialist Bulgaria and nonaligned but socialist-leaning Zambia, Ghodsee examines the feminist networks that developed between the Second and Third Worlds and shows how alliances between socialist women challenged American women’s leadership of the global women’s movement. Drawing on interviews and archival research across three continents, Ghodsee argues that international ideological competition between capitalism and socialism profoundly shaped the world women inhabit today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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.

REVIEWS

"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."

-- C. E. Rasmussen 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."

-- Tony Pecinovsky 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."

-- Tanja R. Müller 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."

-- Christine Varga-Harris 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.”

-- Chiara Bonfiglioli 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.”

-- Dominic Martin 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.”

-- Renata Jambrešic Kirin 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.”

-- Jennifer Erickson 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.”

-- Alexandra Ghit International Review of Social History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

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