Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946-1975 / Giusi Russo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Russo, Giusi, author.

Series:

Expanding frontiers.

Expanding Frontiers

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women's rights--History--20th century.

Women's rights.

Women--Social conditions--20th century.

Women.

Decolonization.

United Nations. Commission on the Status of Women.

United Nations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (307 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946-1975 tells the story of how women's bodies were at the center of the international politics of women's rights in the postwar period. Giusi Russo focuses on the United Nation Commission on the Status of Women and its multiple interactions with the colonial and postcolonial worlds, showing how-depending on the setting and the inquiry-liberal, imperial, and transnational feminisms could coexist. Russo suggests that in the early stages of identifying discriminating agents in women's lives, UN commissioners overlooked the nation-state and went through a process of fighting discrimination without identifying the discriminator. However, it was the focus on empire that allowed for a clear identification of how gender constructs were instrumental to state politics and the exclusion of women. An emphasis on colonial practices also generated a focus on the body and radically shifted the commission's politics from formal equality to a gender-based equilibrium of rights that emphasized practice rather than law. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Russo looks at the women living under colonial and postcolonial systems as the key actors in defining the politics of women's rights at the UN"-- Provided by publisher.

"Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946-1975 examines the organization's gendered politics of colonialism and decolonization from its foundation until the mid-1970s"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Women of the World: Visible and Invisible Bodies

Imperial Encounters and Occupied Bodies

Cold War, Competing Womanhood, and Bodies in the Microcosm

The Sacred Trust and the Body in Pain

Bodily Rituals and the Dialectic of Foreign and Local Voices

Bodies in Captivity, Gender Equilibrium, and the Shift from Liberal Politics

Reproducing the Nation and the Right to Control One's Destiny.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781496234940

1496234944

OCLC:

1365608244