(LKPR) (with student caps) in front of IWSA's (now IAW's) banner at the suffrage conference in Stockholm in 1911. Gold and white were the primary colors of the mainstream or liberal international women's suffrage movement, and had been used by American liberal suffragists since 1867 The International Alliance of Women, formerly the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, is historically the most important international organization within the
bourgeois-liberal women's rights movement. The decision for the establishment of the organization was taken in
Washington in 1902 by suffragists frustrated at the reluctance of the
International Council of Women to support women's suffrage. As such the Alliance was a more progressive organization that emphasized legal and political equality between women and men from the outset. The Alliance was formally constituted during the
Second conference in
Berlin in 1904 as the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), and was headquartered in
London for much of its history. Its founders included
Carrie Chapman Catt,
Millicent Fawcett,
Helene Lange,
Susan B. Anthony,
Anita Augspurg,
Rachel Foster Avery, and
Käthe Schirmacher.
Adela Stanton Coit was also among those associated with the Alliance's foundation in 1904 and later served as its treasurer. Among subsequent congresses were those held in
Copenhagen (1906),
Amsterdam (1908),
London (1909),
Stockholm (June 1911), and
Budapest (1913). The
French Union for Women's Suffrage (UFSF), founded in February 1909, was formally recognized by the IWSA congress in London in April 1909 as representing the French suffrage movement. IWSA also started its own monthly journal,
Jus Suffragii. IWSA, influenced by moderate liberal feminist Millicent Fawcett to take a position against 'militant' tactics in suffrage campaigns, refused membership to the
WSPU at their 1906 Copenhagen meeting. , Anna Lindemann, Annie Furuhjelm, Signe Bergmann,
Chrystal Macmillan and
Rosika Schwimmer. Seated row, left to right:
Millicent Garrett Fawcett,
Carrie Chapman Catt and Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger. At the Budapest congress, the Alliance discussed establishing international headquarters, enlarging
Jus Suffragii and moving its publication. Coit, as treasurer, reported that £2,000 would be needed for the next two years to fund new headquarters, a paid secretary, an enlarged newspaper and publications; pledges of £2,510 were made. After the congress, the official monthly paper moved from Rotterdam to London and the Alliance established its international headquarters there. The Headquarters Committee consisted of Catt, Fawcett, Coit and
Chrystal Macmillan; Coit chaired it for its first two years, and the three London members held seventy meetings between 1913 and 1920. In the interwar period, the organization was one of the three major international "bourgeois" women's organizations, alongside the
International Council of Women (ICW) and the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Of these, IWSA (IAW) was more progressive and oriented towards legal equality and equal citizenship than ICW. At the same time, IWSA was more conservative than WILPF. The organization's members were often associated with liberal parties and movements, but some were also progressive conservatives or liberal conservatives. Most IAW members held "similar views of society and societal change, which assumed a top-down approach, where the elite were cast as the true agents of development." At the same time IAW claimed to speak on behalf of all women. The first executive board included
Carrie Chapman Catt as president,
Anita Augspurg as first vice-president,
Millicent Garrett Fawcett as second vice-president and
Rachel Foster Avery as secretary. The organization's first President Carrie Chapman Catt also founded the
League of Women Voters in the United States during her presidency. The organization's second President,
Margery Corbett-Ashby, spoke at length about the IWSA in a series of oral history interviews with the historian,
Brian Harrison, conducted as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titled
Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. The April 1975, September, November and December 1976, and February 1977 interviews all contain information about the IWSA. Since the onset of the
Cold War the alliance's liberal internationalist outlook was strengthened. The alliance held firm anti-communist views and maintained a clear pro-
Western stance throughout the Cold War. Dame
Margery Corbett Ashby, wrote that "it was us or the communist women who would organize the Near East." In the alliance's journal ''International Women's News'' it was stated in 1946 that the support of the
United Nations and democracy must "remain in the forefront of our programme." Its third President
Hanna Rydh worked actively to build cooperation in developing countries, partially to counteract communism. IAW's members in the
Nordic countries were also members of the
Joint Organization of Nordic Women's Rights Associations. ==Policies==