Review, Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 1993)

Columbia Missourian, May 1, 1994

On November 1, 1961, in cities across the nation, 50,000 women marched under the slogan Women Strike for Peace to protest the American and Soviet governments’ testing of nuclear weapons. Defining themselves as mothers concerned for the welfare of their children, the demonstrators carried signs proclaiming “Save the Children.” Defending their unprecedented entrance onto the Cold War political stage in terms of their traditional maternal role, the women had little idea that they were changing the nature of American politics. But, as Amy Swerdlow argues, WSP itself was transformed as its members confronted the limitations of justifying their political participation on the basis of traditional gender roles.

For mothers in the post-World War II era, the culturally prescribed role was to remain home and provide a nurturing setting for the children of the baby boom and the working men in gray flannel suits. But many women felt increasingly stifled in suburban homes that Betty Friedan labeled “comfortable concentration camps.” Thus the opportunity to escape the home and participate in a meaningful way in a current political debate struck a responsive chord. By defending their politicization in terms of their maternal role, WSP members circumvented charges that they had no business in politics.

The spectacle of so many female demonstrators baffled both the media and public officials, Swerdlow says. “Because the marchers seemed to belong to no unifying organizations and because their language was so maternal and nonideological, their sudden appearance on the political stage seemed to be totally apolitical and spontaneous.”

But the image, largely self-cultivated, that a group of political naïfs conceived and executed WSP is deceiving, Swerdlow says. In fact, a group of Washington, D.C., homemakers, led by the children’s book illustrator Dagmar Wilson, had called the strike five weeks earlier. Like a significant number of other women in WSP, Wilson was a successful career woman, though in light of the period’s emphasis on home and family, she chose to present herself as a concerned mother and homemaker.

Angered by other peace organizations’ unwillingness to speak out on the dangers of nuclear testing, Wilson and other women issued a call for women across the country to take a day off from their usual routine to draw attention to the dangers confronting themselves and their children. Specifically, Wilson saw the importance of injecting women’s voices into the political discourse. “You know how men are,” she said. “They talk in abstractions and prestige and the technicalities of the bomb, almost as if this were all a game of chess. Well, it isn’t. There are times, it seems to me, when the only thing to do is let out a loud scream. . . . Just women raising a hue and cry against nuclear weapons for all of them to cut it out.”

Originally, WSP was conceived as a one-time event, but the success of the November 1 demonstration encouraged the women to maintain their organization. At the same time, though, they were resolved not to form another hierarchically-structured organization with power concentrated in the hands of a few at the top. WSP, then came to be marked by a “structurelessness” that emphasized participation and democracy. As Swerdlow says, this structure, which the WSPers self-deprecatingly referred to as “unorganization,” became one of the groups most important legacies for the later women’s movement.

In the anti-Communist atmosphere of the early 1960s, even a group defending its activism along traditional gender lines, could not escape public attack forever. In December 1962, several WSP leaders were called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to testify about alleged Communist domination of the group. Throughout the Cold War period, an appearance before the committee carried with it the threat of social, political, and economic reprisals if the witness did not cooperate fully. But the WSPers refused to be intimidated by the committee, packing the room with supporters and handing out bouquets. The witnesses, even when refusing to cooperate, presented themselves as unwilling to play by traditional political rules. When a congressman demanded of one witness, “Did you wear a colored paper daisy to identify yourself as a member of the Women Strike for Peace?” she replied, “It sounds like such a far cry from communism it is impossible not to be amused. I still invoke the Fifth Amendment.”

Swerdlow traces the history of WSP through the rest of the 1960s, showing how the organization played an important role in the movement against the Vietnam War. She also portrays the paradoxical relationship between WSP and the growing women’s movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The younger feminists frequently denounced WSP for accepting and even reinforcing traditional gender patterns. But as Swerdlow points out, the feminists failed to recognize how WSP had paved the way for their own success. For under the guise of defending stereotypical women’s roles, WSP had undermined the hegemony of those roles by building a women’s organization and challenging the traditional male bastion of politics. With a keen understanding of the complexities and ironies of historical change, Swerdlow argues that the story of WSP “reveals that maternal rhetoric can be an inspirational organizing tool, a source of energy, commitment, and passion. . . . It can mobilize a deeply felt woman’s critique, and project an alternative vision of international relations and social interaction, along with fresh forms of dissent and direct action.”