, recently returned from the world Peace Congress in Brussels; Mrs.
Hannah Clothier Hull, President of the League; Dr.
Gertrude C. Bussey, of Goucher College;
Mrs. Ernest Gruening. Back row, left to right: Mrs.
Frank Aydelotte, of Swarthmore, Pa., and Mrs.
Mildred S. Olmstead, who just made an expensive trip through the West and Middle West speaking on the need for peace" WILPF developed out of
the International Women's Congress against
World War I that took place in
The Hague, Netherlands, in 1915 and the formation of the International Women's Committee of Permanent Peace; the name WILPF was not chosen until 1919. The first WILPF president,
Jane Addams, had previously founded the '''Woman's Peace Party''' in the United States, in January 1915, this group later became the US section of WILPF. Along with Jane Addams,
Marian Cripps and
Margaret E. Dungan were also founding members. The British campaigner
Maude Royden remained vice president of the international WILPF, and other British members included
Kathleen Courtney,
Isabella Ford,
Margaret Hills,
Catherine Marshall,
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence,
Ethel Snowdon, and
Helen Swanwick. As of 1920 the US section of WILPF was headquartered in New York City.
Marian Cripps, Baroness Parmoor, who later served as president of its British branch.
Richard J. Evans described the founders of WILPF as "a tiny band of courageous and principled women on the far-left fringes of
bourgeois-liberal feminism". Furthermore, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is opposed to wars and international conflicts. The major movements of the league have been: open letter to UN secretary general to formally end the Korean War, a statement on weapons and an international day for the total
elimination of nuclear weapons,
gender-based violence and women
human rights defenders.
Woman's Peace Party (US) A forerunner to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Woman's Peace Party (WPP) was formed in January 1915 in
Washington, D.C., at a meeting called by
Jane Addams and
Carrie Chapman Catt. The approximately 3,000 women attendees approved a platform calling for the extension of suffrage to women and for a conference of
neutral countries to offer continuous
mediation as a way of ending war. WPP sent representatives, among them the journalist and novelist Mary Heaton Vorse, to a subsequent International Women's Congress for Peace and Freedom, held in The Hague from April 28–30, 1915.
International Congress of Women, The Hague, 1915 The
1915 International Congress of Women was organized by the
German feminist Anita Augspurg, Germany's first female
jurist, and
Lida Gustava Heymann (1868–1943) at the invitation of the
Dutch pacifist, feminist and
suffragist Aletta Jacobs to protest the
war then raging in
Europe, and to suggest ways to prevent war in the future. The Congress opened on April 28, wound up on May 1, It adopted much of the platform of WPP and established an
International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) with
Jane Addams as president. WPP soon became the US Section of ICWPP.
Second International Women's Congress for Peace and Freedom, Zürich, 1919 Jane Addams met with President
Woodrow Wilson and is said to have worked out some common ground on
peace. However, at their second international congress, held in
Zürich in 1919, ICWPP denounced the final terms of the
peace treaty ending World War I as a scheme of
revenge of the victors over the vanquished that would sow the seeds of another
world war. They decided to make their committee permanent and renamed it the '''Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.''' WILPF moved its headquarters to
Geneva to be near the proposed site of the
League of Nations, although WILPF did not endorse empowering that organization to conduct food
blockades or to use military pressure to enforce its resolutions. The League called for international
disarmament and an end to
economic imperialism. The US branch of WILPF grew in recognition and membership during the post-WWI era, despite some attacks on the organisation as "unpatriotic" during the
First Red Scare. The WILPF supported treaties such as the
Washington Naval Treaty and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, regarding them as stepping stones to a peaceful world order. ==Later work==