Preface to Women in the Twentieth Century World (1977)

Abstract

This book was born out of a resolve in 1974 to undertake only those conference and lecture assignments in 1975, International Women’s Year, that would enable me to address important issues concerning the role of women in the twentieth century. The chapters that follow were a series of papers prepared, except for the opening and closing chapters, for a variety of programs focusing on world issues extending from the fall of 1974 to the spring of 1976. Each is intended to speak to policy issues in relation to the three International Women’s Year themes: equality, development, and peace. Because I was writing the macrohistorical Underside of History at the same time, historical background kept creeping into each paper. However, I was simultaneously working with my colleagues Shirley Nuss and Dorothy Carson on United Nations data on women for the Handbook of International Data on Women, and was therefore sharply aware of the picture emerging from that data on the situation of women in this decade. What ties together the historical perspective and the current statistical data is my own personal experience as a scholar and activist in the international community over the past decade and a half.