The Limits of the Separate Sphere: How Polish Women thought Equality in the Long Nineteenth Century

• In Event: Nationalism and Women’s Emancipation: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This presentation will explore how nineteenth- to twentieth-century Polish women’s groups approached questions of women’s equality and emancipation, with some choosing to radically redefine family and nation, while others promoted the idea of what Cornett terms “separate and unequal” that left women in subservience to a patriarchal national ideal. Specifically, the paper analyzes a selection of women’s groups from the earliest calls for women’s emancipation in the mid-nineteenth century, to the formation of political parties after the 1905 Russian Revolution and finally in the interwar period, when Poland functioned as an independent state. It shows how a strong nationalist sentiment developed among Polish women’s groups as a result of imperial repression during Poland’s partition period (1795-1918) and how this stifled the development of a stronger women’s movement.

Author

• Natalie Nikkole Cornett, Brandeis U