The Inter-Allied Women's Conference (also known as the Suffragist Conference of the Allied Countries and the United States) opened in Paris on 10 February 1919. It was convened parallel to the Paris Peace Conference to introduce women's issues to the peace process after the First World War. Leaders in the international women's suffrage movement had been denied the opportunity to participate in the official proceedings several times before being allowed to make a presentation before the Commission on International Labour Legislation. On 10 April, women were finally allowed to present a resolution to the League of Nations Commission. It covered the trafficking and sale of women and children, their political and suffrage status, and the transformation of education to include the human rights of all persons in each nation.
Though the women involved failed to achieve many of their aims, their efforts marked the first time that women were allowed to participate formally in an international treaty negotiation. They were successful in gaining the right for women to serve in the League of Nations in all capacities, whether as staff or delegates; and in gaining adoption of their provisions for humane labour conditions and the prevention of trafficking. The fact that the women were allowed to participate in the formal peace conference validated women's ability to take part in international policy-making and globalised the discussion of human rights.
Background
The consequences of the First World War were profound: four empires fell; numerous countries were created or regained independence; and significant changes were made to the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 was the initial forum for establishing the terms of peace; it was by design a global conference with representation from 33 nations, concerned with a broad mandate extending to the establishment of a new international community based on moral and legal principles. As such, it called on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to assist in its work. It was the focus of NGO and lobby groups eager to advance their agendas by vigorous advocacy.
Initially, the Peace Conference organisers had planned to draw up the treaties based on the plenary sessions. The need for restoring stability, secrecy, and speedy progress, however, prevented the public sessions from doing so. Instead, the meetings of the Supreme Council, headed by the Prime Minister and foreign minister of each of the Principal Powers—United Kingdom (UK), France, Italy, Japan, and the US—served as the negotiation sessions for delegates in attendance. Fifty-two separate commissions, and numerous committees, made up of diplomats, policy experts, and other specialists, framed the articles of the various treaties and presented them as recommendations to the Supreme Council. Among the varied commissions were the Commission on Labour Questions, and the League of Nations Commission, which would eventually agree to meet with the women's delegates.
As world leaders gathered for negotiations to draft peace terms after the armistices, Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger—vice-president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance and president of the auxiliary organisation, the French Union for Women's Suffrage—wrote a letter dated 18 January 1919 to the US President, Woodrow Wilson, urging him to allow women to participate in the discussions that would inform the treaty negotiations and policy making. Concerned with war crimes committed against women and the lack of any formal outlet for women's political agency, French suffragists wrote to Wilson again on 25 January. They stressed that because some women had fought alongside men, and many women had provided support for men in the war, women's issues should be addressed at the conference. Though Wilson acknowledged their participation and sacrifices, he refused to grant women an official role in the peace process, arguing that their concerns were outside the scope of discussions and that conference delegates were not in a position to tell governments how to manage their internal affairs.
A delegation of 80 French women led by Valentine Thomson, editor of La Vie Feminine and daughter of former cabinet minister Gaston Thomson, met with President Wilson on 1 February at Villa Murat to press for their inclusion in the deliberations of the peace conference. His response was similar to his previous stance that employment issues might be discussed, but women's civil and political rights were domestic issues. During the Labour and Socialist International Conference held in Bern, Switzerland, between , women participants from the International Women's Committee of Permanent Peace had held a special meeting organised by Rosika Schwimmer, the Hungarian ambassador to Switzerland and founder of the Hungarian Feminist Association. The delegates at the Bern conference resolved that they would support a democratically formed League of Nations and women's participation in the Paris Peace Conference.
In response, women from the French Union for Women's Suffrage and the National Council of French Women, acting under the leadership of de Witt-Schlumberger, invited international colleagues to meet in Paris in a parallel conference scheduled to open on 10 February. They sent invitations to organisations involved in the suffrage movement in all Allied nations, asking for delegates to participate in a women's conference to present their views and concerns to the delegates of the "official" conference. In parallel, the French feminists worked to persuade the male delegates to support the women's involvement, as they were convinced that international co-operation and co-ordination were required to solve domestic socio-economic problems. The women who responded to the call to participate as delegates or to bring information about conditions in their countries included representatives from France, Italy, the UK, and the US, as well as Armenia, Belgium, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, and South Africa.
Actions February
The Paris Peace Conference negotiations took place from January to May 1919, while the women's conference convened from mid-February to mid-April. On 10 February, when the women's conference opened, Thomson and Louise Compain, a writer and member of the French Union for Women's Suffrage, began serving as editors and translators to the women's conference secretary, Suzanne Grinberg, a lawyer, vice-president of the in Paris, and secretary of the central committee of the French Union for Women's Suffrage. Constance Drexel, a German-American newspaper reporter, wrote daily dispatches for the Chicago Tribune Foreign News Service and collaborated with the women delegates throughout the conference.
On 11 February, a delegation led by chair Millicent Fawcett, a leader in the British suffrage movement and president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, called on Wilson. The delegation included Zabel Yesayan of Armenia, who brought a report about women in Armenia and Macedonia being captured during the war and detained in harems; Margherita Ancona, president of the National Pro Suffrage Federation for Italy; and Nina Boyle (Union of South Africa), a member of the Women's Freedom League and a journalist. Belgian delegates included Jane Brigode, president of the Belgian Federation for Suffrage and Marie Parent, president of the Belgian National Council of Women and League for Rights of Women. Also present were British delegates Ray Strachey, a member of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and Rosamond Smith. The French women who participated in the delegation were de Witt-Schlumberger; Cécile Brunschvicg, a founder of the French Union for Women's Suffrage and its first general secretary; and Marguerite Pichon-Landry, chair of the legislation section of the National Council of French Women. The delegates from the US were Katharine Bement Davis, head of the US government's Women's Department of Social Hygiene; Florence Jaffray Harriman, chair of the Women's Committee of the Democratic Party; and Juliet Barrett Rublee, a member of the National Birth Control League and the Cornish [New Hampshire] Equal Suffrage League. The delegation asked if a Women's Commission could be included in the conference to address the concerns of women and children. At the meeting Wilson suggested, instead, that the male diplomats from the peace conference form a Women's Commission to which the Inter-Allied Women's Conference could serve as advisers.
The following day, an almost identical delegation to that which had met with Wilson, met with French President Raymond Poincaré and his wife, Henriette, at the Élysée Palace. It included de Witt-Schlumberger, Ruth Atkinson, president of the Nelson, New Zealand branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and delegates from Belgium, France, Italy, the UK, and possibly Australia. Also present were three women from the US: Harriman, Rublee, and Harriet Taylor, head of the YMCA in France. On 13 February, Wilson took the request to the Council of Ten—Arthur Balfour (UK), Georges Clemenceau (France), Robert Lansing (US), Baron Nobuaki Makino (Japan), Viscount Alfred Milner (UK), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Stephen Pichon (France), Sidney Sonnino (Italy), and Wilson—along with the Maharaja of Bikaner Ganga Singh (India) and other dignitaries. Once again the women's proposal was dismissed, with Prime Minister Clemenceau recommending that they be referred to work with the Commission on Labour.
Their dismissal did not stop the women from attempting to gain support from the peace conference delegates. They met with Jules Cambon, Paul Hymans and Poincaré, all of whom agreed that the women's input on such issues as deportations from Armenia, Belgium, Greece, France, Poland, and Serbia and the sale of women in Greece and the Ottoman Empire were pertinent issues on which a women's commission might gather data. At the end of February, some of the women who had come from Britain returned home and were replaced in early March by Margery Corbett Ashby, a member of the executive board of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and Margery Fry, a penal reformer, who at one time was president of the Birmingham branch of the National Union of Women Workers and a member of the Constitutional Society for Women's Suffrage. Also by the end of February, Graziella Sonnino Carpi of the National Women's Union () of Milan and Eva Mitzhouma of Poland had joined the women's conference.
March The women's conference delegates met with peace conference delegates from 16 countries, hoping to generate support at least for allowing women to sit on committees likely to deal with issues concerning women and children. A second delegation of women, led by de Witt-Schlumberger, met with the Council of Ten, without Wilson present, on 11 March. The Peace Conference delegates who were present agreed to allow the women an audience with the Commission on International Labour Legislation and the League of Nations Commission. While an audience was far less than the women wanted, allowing them formal participation in an international treaty negotiation was unprecedented.