On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 08:57 PM, Dayne Goodwin wrote:
An alarming part of that whole episode is that Gore and the Democrats basically surrendered to the Republican use of force, apparently choosing 'stability' over democratic process.

Is there any truth to the claim that this was a quid pro quo for the Republican acceptance of the election of Kennedy in 1960? It was widely claimed that voter fraud in Illinois swung the election for Kennedy.
I do not recall where I read these claims.
ken h

From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...>
Date: September 19, 2020 at 11:45:27 AM EDT
To: h-review@...
Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp@...>
Subject: H-Net Review [H-Diplo]:  Haefner on Ghodsee, 'Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War'
Reply-To: h-review@...

Kristen Ghodsee.  Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's
Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War.  Durham  Duke
University Press, 2019.  Illustrations. 328 pp.  $27.95 (paper), ISBN
978-1-4780-0181-2; $104.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4780-0139-3.

Reviewed by Julianne H. Haefner (Central Michigan University)
Published on H-Diplo (September, 2020)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

In June and July of 1975, over two thousand participants from 133
United Nations member states descended on Mexico City for the First
World Conference on Women. Participants from the First World and the
Second/Third World primarily differed on whether the conference was
supposed to only discuss women's issues or whether the activists
present should also discuss other matters, including issues like
South African apartheid or the peace process in the Middle East. The
activists from the Second and Third World argued that women should in
fact discuss all matters that their male counterparts were discussing
at the UN. This meeting in Mexico City was not the only one during
the 1970s and 1980s that drew participants from First, Second, and
Third World nations. Kristen Ghodsee's book Second World, Second Sex:
Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War
examines the activism of women in two Second World nations, Bulgaria
and Zambia, and their contributions to a range of meetings of women
activists during the Decade for Women (1976-85). Her main argument is
that in the writing of history the contributions of the women from
Eastern Europe and socialist-leaning African nations have been
largely obscured by giving credit to women from the West in advancing
women's rights throughout the Decade for Women. Ghodsee's main
purpose in writing this book is to uncover this forgotten history of
the Cold War to show how women from the Second World championed
women's rights much earlier than some of their Western counterparts.

_Second World, Second Sex_ is divided into two main parts. In the
first part of the book, Ghodsee discusses some of the context of the
Cold War and feminism. In this part she also presents two case
studies of women activists: Bulgaria and Zambia. She examines the
contributions Zambian and Bulgarian women made to the advancing of
women's rights in their respective countries. For example, the
Women's Brigade in Zambia organized classes to fight against infant
mortality and taught women how to use the decimal-based currency, an
important precursor to become economically involved in Zambian
society.

The second part of the book focuses on some of the individual events
throughout the Decade for Women. Throughout the Decade for Women
female activists from across the world convened in multiple places,
from training courses to workshops to conferences, allowing many of
these women activists to cross paths. While the activists displayed
solidarity for their shared causes, tensions still developed between
representatives from different nations, and in particular between
First World and Second/Third World nations.

Geopolitical issues and topics contributed to tensions between the
activists from different parts of the world. This is evident, for
example, in the debates about whether or not to include the word
"Zionism" in the final conference document of the 1985 World
Conference on Women in Nairobi. The US delegation threatened that it
would leave the conference if Zionism was to be included. Some
nations concurred with this sentiment, but Eastern bloc nations and
some of their allies tried to purposely antagonize the United States
on this matter and advocated for the inclusion of the term. On the
final day of the conference several delegations, among them the US,
the Soviet, and the Palestinian, met up in private to discuss the
matter. Finally, under pressure from the Kenyan government a
compromise was reached and the following statement was included in
the final conference document: "all forms of racial discrimination"
(p. 213). This compromise was largely considered a victory for the
US.

Of course, relations between the Eastern bloc countries and the
African nations were not without tensions either. Racism, for
example, was persistent in the Eastern bloc and many African women
spoke of the racism they encountered at some of the events. For
example, one Zambian woman recalled instances of segregation and
discrimination when she attended a training course in the German
Democratic Republic. Despite proclamations of solidarity from the
Eastern European activists, stereotypes about Africa and African
culture persisted.   

Throughout her work Ghodsee continues to make connections between the
story of Zambian and Bulgarian women activism and today's feminist
movement. She remains critical of today's liberal feminism and its
connections to capitalism. Ghodsee closes the book by pointing toward
the future of feminism, expressing her hope that "this book
contributes to building a future in which feminism is no longer the
handmaiden of neoliberal capitalism but a broad-based social movement
that fights ignorance, prejudice, and injustice in all its form" (p.
243). One can interpret part of Ghodsee's work also as a call for
action, challenging today's feminist movement.

Ghodsee draws her evidence from a variety of sources: Bulgarian and
Zambian government archival sources, personal archives, and oral
interviews with many of the activists conducted by the author
herself. She skillfully weaves the different sources together to
provide a cohesive narrative. Methodologically _Second World, Second
Sex_ can serve as a building block to merge oral interviews and
archival sources, providing a nuanced and human-centered
understanding of historical developments.

The book has multiple strengths, among them centering the narrative
on women and their activism, and secondly focusing on women from
Second World nations. The book adds layers to multiple histories and
can be beneficial for a number of historians. Often the story of the
Cold War is told from the perspective of the United States, its
European allies, and the Soviet Union. But Ghodsee's focus on Zambia
and Bulgaria provides a different understanding of the events
surrounding the Decade for Women, one in which the Cold War
superpowers remain side actors. Thus, the book makes valuable
contributions to the study of the Global South, and placing the women
in Zambia and Bulgaria as main actors shows their agency in the
larger narrative of women's rights and the Cold War. In addition,
Ghodsee's work also illuminates the global networks and connections
between women's rights activists throughout the Cold War.[1]

Additionally, the book is very readable; Ghodsee's writing style of
incorporating oral interviews with secondary sources and archival
sources makes for an enjoyable read. The author does at times discuss
her personal recollections surrounding some of the interviews, but
this does not take away from the overall objectiveness and academic
rigor. On the contrary, Ghodsee's personal recollections add
positively to understanding the craft of oral history. Obviously, any
kind of oral history can have its pitfalls, something the author
readily acknowledges. It is helpful for the reader that Ghodsee did
not just rely on the oral interviews but also supplemented the
personal memories with other sources to verify and fact-check.

For the most part the book is a well-rounded account of the events.
However, it would have been helpful if the author had engaged more
with news coverage of the events during the Decade for Women. Did any
major news outlets report on the events? How were these reports
framed and presented? Did news media outlets report on the events as
being just focused on domestic matters, or did they include reports
about the above-mentioned debates regarding the term "Zionism"? This
would have added another dimension to the story and would have given
an impression of how this kind of activism had been viewed outside of
the activist circles.

Overall, _Second World, Second Sex_ is an excellent account of
women's activism in Bulgaria and Zambia throughout the Decade for
Women. Using oral history and archival sources, the author skillfully
examines this forgotten Cold War history. Her work makes meaningful
contributions to a range of historiographies, from activism, to
feminism, to the Cold War. Her work is particularly meaningful
because it places women in these Second World nations at the
forefront of the narrative.

Note

[1]. Other works that discuss women's rights, global developments,
and the Cold War include Karen Garner, _Shaping a Global Women's
Agenda: Women's NGOs and Global Governance, 1925-1985_ (Manchester:
University of Manchester Press, 2010); Yulia Gradskova, "Women's
International Democratic Federation, the 'Third World' and the Global
Cold War from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s," _Women's History
Review_ 29, no. 2 (2020): 270-88; Bonnie Smith, _Women's History in
Global Perspective_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); and
Lucy Delap, _Feminisms: A Global History_ (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2020).

_Julianne Haefner is a doctoral candidate in Central Michigan
University's transnational and comparative history PhD program. She
is currently working on her dissertation exploring US foreign policy
toward Angola under the Gerald R. Ford administration (1974-77)._

Citation: Julianne H. Haefner. Review of Ghodsee, Kristen, _Second
World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity
during the Cold War_. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. September, 2020.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55334

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
License.