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Gender & Humanitarianism: (Dis-)Empowering Women and Men in the Twentieth Century Gender & Humanitarianism: (Dis-) Empowering Women and Men in the Twentieth Century Veranstalter:
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Moeller, Esther |
| Copyright Year | 2017 |
| Abstract | While there is currently a lot of research on the history of Humanitarianism, its relationship with the analytical category of gender still lacks systematic exploration. The international conference „Gender & Humanitarianism: (Dis-)Empowering Women and Men in the Twentieth Century“, which was funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and held at the Leibniz Institute of European History (Mainz), was organized with the aim of filling this gap in research. It explored how gender shaped and was shaped by humanitarian discourses and practices in the period between the First World War and the end of the Cold War. The conference papers discussed this relationship by emphasizing historiographical issues relating to processes of inclusion and exclusion, adopting multiple transnational perspectives. Integrating humanitarian organizations and actors from across the whole globe, the papers presented had multiple geographical focuses on the Middle East, on India, on Western Europe, as well as on Central and South America. After a brief introduction to the topic by JOHANNES PAULMANN (Mainz), KATHARINA STORNIG (Giessen) and ESTHER MÖLLER (Mainz), the first panel, dealing with masculinities and femininities in humanitarian discourse and practice, started with two papers discussing the roles of women as relief workers in moments of historical crisis. Focusing on the context of the Armenian genocide and the displacements of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, INGER MARIE OKKENHAUG (Volda) inquired into the interaction between Scandinavian female health care professionals of the Danish and Norwegian Women’s Mission Organization, on the one hand, and female Armenian refugees and relief workers, on the other, between 1925 and 1935 in what is today Lebanon and Syria. She highlighted different forms of cooperation involving close connections and interactions between Armenian and Scandinavian women, while especially stressing the role of religion in the encounter between Lutherans and Armenians. Okkenhaug also discussed the relief workers’ perception of their roles as women and their interaction with male refugees or coworkers. MARIA LIDOLA (Konstanz) concentrated on official discourses of gender related to humanitarian actors in the case of Cuban medical missions in the second half of the twentieth century. Lidola showed how the increasing number of female physicians within Cuban international medical missions since the early 1960s was used as a politically and ideologically charged argument on the part of the Cuban socialist government. She stressed the linkage between humanitarian practice and political ideologies, which were deeply gendered, because women’s supposed equal access to profession was used as evidence for their equal standing in Cuban society. At the same time she argued that, by contrast, the high quota of women in the Cuban medical profession abroad played a part in contributing to undermining the significance of Cuban medical aid in general in Western discourses. Subsequent presentations, meanwhile, investigated the role of masculinity in the context of humanitarian aid. BERTRAND TAITHE (Manchester) focused on humanitarian narratives on the basis of biographical sources, pointing out changing and controversial norms of masculinity, which were closely related to perceptions of heroic manhood. By taking a closer look at biographies of humanitarian workers, Taithe was able to explore common points and differences in their presentation of masculinity throughout the twentieth century. Taking a different perspective, KERRIE HOLLOWAY (London) argued that male humanitarians have been marginalized in humanitarian history. She exemplified this by showing hitherto unrecognized male relief workers in the history of the Spanish Civil War. Holloway suggested that strict conventions and the perpetuation of traditional gen- |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=7338&pn=tagungsberichte&type=tagungsberichte&view=pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
