At the conclusion of the Great War, statesmen from the Allied nations gathered in Paris to hammer out the terms of the peace treaty. As Mona Seigel explains in her engaging new book, Peace on Our Terms, women gathered too. Siegel reconstructs the trajectories that drew women into the peace process and, she argues, transformed them into global feminists.

In the winter of 1919, French feminist Marguerite de Witt Schlumberger organized the Inter-Allied Women's Conference and lobbied for the creation of a Women's Commission to advise on issues related to women and children. The male leaders of the “Big Three” (France, Great Britain, and the United States) responded politely, but they had no real interest in granting women representation. The Peace Treaty signed at Versailles in June 1919 offered a single concession: women as well as men could apply for positions at the newly formed League of Nations.

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