"Every child my child, every man my man": The ideology and strategy of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the beginning of the Nuclear Age, 1945--1965

Abstract

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is an international women's peace organization formed in 1915. In "'Every Child, My Child, Every Man, Man,'" I examine the WILPF after World War II and its specific ideology and strategy during the beginning of the nuclear age through the use of oral history interviews and archival research. The women of the WILPF engaged in fervent anti-nuclear activism, often using maternalist rhetoric as a tool for its anti-nuclear agenda. During the McCarthy Era, the WILPF's close ideological connection with communism made it a target for government investigation, which jeopardized the future of the organization. I look at the presence of communism in the WILPF and the way the WILPF avoided severe governmental persecution, while at the same time endorsing anti-nuclear demonstrations and policies on both a domestic and international level.