The Beijing Revolutionary Women’s Conference of '49 with Elisabeth Armstrong

Annie joins Elisabeth Armstrong, author of Bury the Corpse of Colonialism: The Revolutionary Feminist Conference of 1949 for a discussion of the Beijing conference and the international women's movement of the period. They discuss the composition and politics of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, the key figures in the WIDF who played a role in the Asian Women’s Conference, the different rhetorical strategies formulated through the conference, including revolutionary motherhood and women’s anti-colonialism, as well as the political and interpersonal dynamics between women in the WIDF from the imperial core and women from colonized countries. They then discuss the place of the conference in the broader communist movement, the role of state repression, and how the terrain of feminist politics has changed since the peak of the WIDF, drawing lessons for contemporary feminist and socialist movements.