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

Women, Empires, and Body Politics at the United Nations, 1946-1975 tells the story of how womens bodies were at the center of the international politics of womens 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 womens 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 commissions 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 womens rights at the UN.Giusi Russo is an assistant professor of history at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania.