Abstract

In recent years both the historiography on empires and on women’s movements have been expanding to further investigate the role of women during colonization and decolonization. This essay explores the years between 1945-1948 as a crucial moment of possibilities in the attempt to create transnational women’s organizing in the French empire and beyond. Focusing on two French organizations, the Association des Femmes de l’Union Française and the Union des Femmes Françaises, as well as their transnational and imperial networks, I argue that their transnational organizing was embedded in imperial preoccupations and different perspectives on the future of empire. By retracing their attempts to engage with women from the overseas territories of the French Union and transnationally, it is possible to both reintegrate the imperial dimension in the history of women’s movements and to shed light on the first post-war years as a moment of connection and difficulties in transnational feminist engagement