Cosmopolitan Sociability in the British and International Federations of University Women, 1945–1960

ABSTRACT

The article highlights the significance of sociability in the activities of the British and International Federations of University Women in the long 1950s. Much of the activity centred on Crosby Hall, the ‘International Clubhouse’ in London for overseas and British graduate women. Ideas of cosmopolitanism and sociability can be traced back to the Enlightenment. The article draws on Glick Schiller et al.'s discussion of cosmopolitan sociability in a transnational age, and suggests that a gendered and historical perspective highlights the significance of events which might appear somewhat marginal compared with more formal political activities. Both Noah Sobe and Thomas Popkewitz have recently highlighted the exclusionary, as well as the inclusive, possibilities of cosmopolitanism. The nature, preparation and importance placed on social events in local, national and international networks demonstrates the centrality of the social in promoting the successful outcome of the more formal activities of the Federations on the public stage.

Notes on contributor

Stephanie Spencer is Reader in the History of Women's Education and Head of Department of Education Studies and Liberal Arts, Faculty of Education, Health and Social Care, University of Winchester, England, UK. She is author of Gender, Work and Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and with Andrea Jacobs and Camilla Leach, Alumni Voices: the changing experience of higher education (University of Winchester Press, 2015).

Notes

1 Report from Aberdeen Association. British Federation of University Women (BFUW) Report 1951–1952, p. 36.

2 Arbitrary divisions of decades time have frequently been modified by historians by reference, for example, to a ‘long’ century reflecting the more gradual nature of temporal change. This article refers to a ‘long’ decade taking as its starting point the preparation for the international conference that was held in London in 1953 and as its end point the conference held in Australia in 1965, which marked the first conference to be held in the Pacific region.

3 The activities of the BFUW and IFUW up to the end of World War II have attracted the attention of women's historians but less attention has been given to their post-war reports. See: Carol Dyhouse (1995) The British Federation of University Women and the Status of Women in Universities, 1907–1939, Women's History Review, 4, pp. 465–485; Joyce Goodman (2010) Cosmopolitan Women Educators, 1920–1939: inside/outside activism and abjection, Paedagogica Historica, 1–2, pp. 69–83; Joyce Goodman (2011) International Citizenship and the International Federation of University Women before 1929, History of Education, 6, pp. 701–721; Joyce Goodman (2012) Women and International Intellectual Co-operation, Paedagogica Historica, 3, pp. 357–368; Marie Sandell (2008) ‘Truly International’?: the International Federation of University Women's quest for expansion in the interwar period, History of Education Researcher, 82, pp. 74–83.

4 Goodman, ‘Women and International Intellectual Co-operation’.

5 Penny Tinkler (2001) English Girls and the International Dimensions of British Citizenship in the 1940s, European Journal of Women's Studies, 1, pp. 103–126.

6 Ibid., p. 115.

7 Nina Glick Schiller, Tsypylma Darieva & Sandra Gruner-Domic (2011) Defining Cosmopolitan Sociability in a Transnational Age: an introduction, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 3, pp. 399–418.

8 Noah W. Sobe (2009) Rethinking ‘Cosmopolitantism’ as an Analytic for the Comparative Study of Globalization and Education, Current Issues in Comparative Education, 1, pp. 6–13.

9 Thomas Popkewitz (2008) Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform. Science, Education

and Making Society by Making the Child (London: Routledge).

10 Tamson Pietsch has recently explored the significance of male networks for establishing colonial academic hierarchies. The networking possibilities for women academics provided by both the BFUW and IFUW were equally important for women trying to carve out academic careers. Tamson Pietsch (2013) Empire of Scholars: universities, networks and the British academic world 1850–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

11 Katharine Bentley-Beauman (1987) Sybil Campbell 1889–1977 (London: Sybil Campbell Library Committee), p. 2.

12 Carol Dyhouse (2006) Students: a gendered history (London: Routledge).

13 R. K. Kelsall, A. Poole & A. Kuhn (1972) Graduates: the sociology of an elite (London: Methuen), p. 118.

14 Judith Hubback (1957) Wives Who Went to College (London: Heinemann).

15 BFUW Report, 1959–60, p. 42.

16 Alva Myrdal & Viola Klein (1956) Women's Two Roles: home and work (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

17 Irene Hilton, Presidential Address, 1959. BFUW Report 1958–59, p. 3.

18 It should be noted that by 1958 only 4.6% of the entire age group, boys and girls, took on degree-level study. Olive Banks (1968) Sociology of Education (London: Batsford), Table 1, p. 27.

19 Hilton, Presidential Address, 1959, p. 4.

20 Ibid.

21 Sandell, ‘“Truly International?”’, p. 74.

22 For example, at the Mexican conference in 1962, p. 13 of the IFUW Report.

23 Report of Seminar on International Understanding, Berne and Geneva, August 1955, p. 20. Dr J. E. van Lohuizen de Leeuw (Lecturer in Indian Studies, University of Cambridge). In IFUW Reports, vol. VII, 1952–56.

24 Ibid., p. 23.

25 BFUW Report, 1964–65, p. 10.

26 Popkewitz, Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform, p. 1. My italics.

27 Goodman, ‘Cosmopolitan Women Educators’, pp. 70–71.

28 Sobe, ‘Rethinking “Cosmopolitantism”’, p. 6.

29 Glick Schiller et al., ‘Defining Cosmopolitan Sociability', p. 399.

30 Kwame Appiah (2000) Cosmopolitanism. Ethics in a World of Strangers (London: Penguin), p. xiii, in Goodman, ‘Cosmopolitan Women Educators’, p. 71.

31 Tinkler, ‘English Girls', p. 109.

32 Goodman, ‘Cosmopolitan Women Educators’, p. 71.

33 See Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/183735?redirectedFrom=sociability&

34 H. Reiss (Ed.) (1991) Kant, Political Writings, Idea for a Universal History, Fourth Proposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 44.

35 Ibid., p. 45.

36 Elizabeth Langland (1992) Nobody's Angels: domestic ideology and middle-class women in the Victorian novel, Proceedings of Modern Language Association, 2, pp. 290–304, p. 291.

37 Anne Campbell (2002) Like a Sister: women and friendship, in A Mind of Her Own: the evolutionary psychology of women (Oxford Scholarship Online, print publication), p. 1.

38 Glick Schiller et al., ‘Defining Cosmopolitan Sociability', p. 400.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., p. 401.

41 Ibid.

42 BFUW Report, 1950–51, p. 8.

43 Ibid., p. 9.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., p. 27.

46 Ibid., p. 33.

47 Ibid., p. 13.

48 See IFUW Reports for details of these conferences.

49 IFUW Report, vol. VIII, Paris conference report, p. 22.

50 IFUW Report, vol. VIII, Helsinki conference report, p. 7.

51 BFUW Report, 1951–52, p. 6.

52 BFUW Report, 1952–53, p. 14.

53 BFUW Report of Executive Committee to the AGM of Council, 1953, p. 7. The amount of organisation for the social programme is exhaustive (and must have been exhausting). Seven functions were organised on behalf of the IFUW, there was an evening reception, day and half-day excursions with a BFUW member as courier on each trip, theatre trips and invitations to private tea parties. The Ceremonials committee took care of organising church services. There can have been little time when a delegate was not under the care of a BFUW member.

54 BFUW Report, 1952–53, p. 15.

55 BFUW Report, 1951–52, p. 8.

56 IFUW Report, 1965, p. 6.

57 Ibid., p. 7.

58 Ibid., p. 8.

59 Ibid., p. 7.

60 Report of seminar on International Understanding, Berne and Geneva, August 1955, p. 23.

61 BFUW Report 1954–55, pp. 22–24.

62 Ibid., p. 29.

63 Ibid.

64 Christine von Oertzen (trans. Kate Sturge) (2014) Science, Gender and Internationalism: women's academic networks, 1917–1955 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

65 Ibid., p. 136 and n. 44. The archives of the BFUW have been inaccessible until the Women's Library's recent move to the London School of Economics. The reports of the BFUW and IFUW are also held in the Sybil Campbell Library Collection, University of Winchester.

66 Von Oertzen, Science, Gender and Internationalism, p. 137.

67 BFUW Report, 1953–54, p. 31.

68 BFUW Report, 1954–55, p. 26.

69 BFUW Report, 1955–56, p. 30.

70 BFUW Report, 1956–57, p. 25.

71 BFUW Report, 1959–60, p. 16.

72 BFUW Report, 1961–62, p. 15.

73 Ibid.

74 BFUW Report, 1962–63, p. 15.

75 Ibid., p. 4.

76 Ibid., p. 10.

77 Ibid., p. 21.

78 BFUW Report, 1963–64, p. 2.

79 Ibid.

80 The BFUW, now the British Federation of Women Graduates, and the IFUW, now Graduate Women International, continue to campaign on human rights and link with a range of other women's organisations to promote international understanding. http://www.graduatewomen.org/; http://bfwg.org.uk

81 BFUW Report, 1959–60, p. 22.

82 Report of Seminar on International Understanding, Berne and Geneva, August 1955, p. 23.