Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s

Women in Culture and Society

by Amy Swerdlow

Women Strike for Peace is the only historical account of this ground-breaking women's movement. Amy Swerdlow, a founding member of WSP, restores to the historical record a significant chapter on American politics and women's studies. Weaving together narrative and analysis, she traces WSP's triumphs, problems, and legacy for the women's movement and American society.

Women Strike for Peace began on November 1, 1961, when thousands of white, middle-class women walked out of their kitchens and off their jobs in a one-day protest against Soviet and American nuclear policies. The protest led to a national organization of women who fought against nuclear arms and U.S. intervention in Vietnam. While maintaining traditional maternal and feminine roles, members of WSP effectively challenged national policies—defeating a proposal for a NATO nuclear fleet, withstanding an investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and sending one of its leaders to Congress as a peace candidate.

As a study of a dissident group grounded in prescribed female culture, and the struggle of its members to avoid being trapped within that culture, this book adds a crucial new dimension to women's studies. In addition, this account of WSP's success as a grass roots, nonhierarchical movement will be of great interest to historians, political scientists, and anyone interested in peace studies or conflict resolution.

"Swerdlow has re-created a unique piece of American political history, a chapter of the international peace movement, and an origin of the modern feminist movement. No historian, activist, or self-respecting woman should be without Women Strike for Peace . It shows not only how one group of women created change, but also how they inevitably changed themselves."—Gloria Steinem

Genres: Feminism, History, Nonfiction

326 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1993

Reviews

[Jennifer Mcarthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Although WSP arrived on the political scene with energy, creativity, passion, and determination, it also carried with it the heavy baggage of the political repression, cultural conformity, and anti feminism that marked the Cold War consensus of the 1950s. The women of WSP, like millions of their cohorts in the period after World War II, had given up jobs, careers, professional training, and dreams of personal achievement to become full-time mothers and consenting members of the culture of domesticity. Possessing little awareness of their contribution to sex-role stereotyping and female oppression, they were not aware in the early years that they were fighting a battle of the sexes, a woman’s battle against the male elites who decided issues of life and death for all of humanity.”

God bless Amy Swerdlow for not allowing a woman’s peace movement as important as this one to be left undocumented, or overlooked.

God bless Alice Herz for your selfless contribution to peace, it should never be forgotten.

To all the other WSP activists who declared that they would not be mocked and red-baited for demanding a safe world for their children and other mothers children across the globe. The legacy of care and compassion you showed is something so beautiful and harrowing reading it all these years on, when it’s still being fought for today.

“We women gave you our sons, loving raised to live, learn, and to create a better world…you used them to kill.”

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent insider's history of an organization that has received far too little attention. WSP spearheaded the drive for a test ban treaty, emphasizing the impact of fallout on children's health. Maternalist rather than feminist, WSP later shifted its energy to providing draft counseling during the Vietnam war. Swerdlow was involved in the movement but later trained as a historian and Women Strike for Peace does a nice job balancing the academic and memoir elements.

[Abigail Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book for my dissertation. It was fascinating to learn all about the role these women played in education people on the threats of nuclear war as well as the realities of the Vietnam War! They were dismissed initially for being mothers as people argued that they had no role in the political field. They were not a political party, but they were a movement which helped to orchestrate significant change!!