IAW History by Pat Richardson
Women's Rights Worldwide
IAW - an international Lobby Group for Women from 1904 to the present
By Pat Richardson, Australia, on Wednesday 16th June 2010
‘The International Alliance of Women
Lobbying Internationally for Women’
The International Alliance of Women is one of the oldest international Feminist Lobby groups in the world.
The original principles were worked out in Washington in 1902 and then ratified at the 2nd Congress in Berlin in June 1904….the major issue was to get the vote for women worldwide…and this date 1904 is always seen as the beginning of the Association, which was then known as ‘The International Woman Suffrage Alliance’.
Vida Goldstein from Australia
The founding groups came from Australia, Germany, UK, the Netherlands,
Denmark, the USA and Sweden…and these countries are still the most active people belonging to the IAW…although the various names of the organisations may have changed, the core principles are still there.
The opening words of the declaration will show that the cause was as just and as relevant today as it was then.
Picture: Vida Goldstein from Victoria represented Australia. She is one of our most famous early feminists.
The first President was Carrie Chapman Catt from the US
A who served from 1904-1923 (see picture). The second was Dame Margery Corbett-Ashby, 1923-1946. However following these two Presidents, the term of office was reduced to two, three year periods. It also is helpful if the President is fluent in a couple of languages.
The structure of the IAW is that Affiliates are National Bodies, often groups of associations…
Associated societies are more localised bodies, and then there are individual members…the organisations must be non-party political and working to improve the status of women….also we have many libraries get our journals and emails.
At present, the IAW has 30 Affiliated societies, and 26 Associated societies and many hundreds of individual members world wide…Some of our affiliates have millions of members and others only a thousand or so…and some of our associated societies could fit in a phone box!!!
IAW these days sees itself as representing women’s interests at the United Nations and many of our volunteers sit on NGO committees to do with that, in New York, Geneva, Paris, Rome Strasbourg at the Council of Europe, at the International Criminal court in The Hague, in Vienna (UNIDO), Nairobi, The Arab League, and the European Womens Lobby.
The organisation has kept up with the times, we have a monthly email newsletter, produced in The Netherlands with our editor, Joke Sebus, and a very up-to-date web site…www.womenalliance.org …kept up to the minute by our Web manager, Alison Brown in Indiana, plus our Journal, ‘The International Women’s News’ is produced three times a year, and has been produced at regular intervals since 1908…there is a Congress every three years, to which all members of organisations, and all individual members meet to discuss issues in workshops and panels…and the results of these discussions becomes the guidelines our representatives use for the next Triennium.
The following year (2011), there is a Board meeting, and the year after (2012), an International meeting where Presidents of our various bodie
s can meet and discuss progress.
The venue for each meeting is in a different country at the invitation of our various member organisations…so we get to see quite a bit of the world.
In June last year, our International Board meeting was held in Heiden in the North East of Switzerland, where our affiliate the Assoc. Suisse Pour les Droits de la Femme, was celebrating their Centenary… …at the conclusion of the meetings, we embarked by bus diagonally across Switzerland on a ‘Tour de Suisse Feministe’ …where we were welcomed at Civic events, held Seminars and ended up in Geneva holding two seminars at the UN buildings there. Contrary to what you would expect, Swiss women only received the vote in all cantons in 1984. And Federally in 1971.
November 2010, the Congress is being held at a Conference Centre out of Johannesburg and the major theme is ‘Violence against women’. Our President Rosy Weiss from Austria, with whom I have worked closely, will be standing down at the end of the Congress, as she has served two terms…
All office holders come up for election at a Congress…and two terms is all anyone can hold a position…however, older members who have served in many capacities, usually then become Commissioners or Regional Directors and people like myself as Membership Secretary are ex-officio the board…
Membership Secretary
I have been Membership Secretary since 1996 and seem to get busier by the year…. As we have no central office, all Members of the Executive and Commissioners, and Board members must be computer literate and online…and contact is now rarely by post, but almost exclusively by email.
I keep the master files, the Printers address file, also I deal with the library subscription Agencies and help the email newsletter editor keep on top of the email addresses for our members…I am answering emails every morning from all over the world.
Although IAW originally formed to get the votes for women, this role quickly expanded to cover all the problems women were facing, in the workforce, in Health, in Education, Trafficking, Violence against women, Peace, Prostitution…also, encompassing the fight against the sexual mutilation of girls… there is nothing our women have not worked on. 
In the early years, the IAW was very involved in the formation of the League of Nations and Dame Margery Corbett Ashley (picture) persuaded Woodrow Wilson to include women in the original charter.
Then following the Second World War, the IAW set up their own committees into Commissions to mirror the different UN bodies… and of course, the IAW is very involved in the CSW Hearings in NY each February…
This is when all the women’s NGO’s converge on NY and have forums and try to influence what is going on in the main sessions inside where conservative countries try to water down the wording of any motions on the floor.
The latest issue of our IAW Journal, (our Editor is Priscilla Todd, from WEL Victoria) has focussed on the CSW activities this past February in NY and anyone who is interested in this subject, please take one of the copies, cover page says ‘Beijing + 15’.. Our journal is usually produced in English and French, but this most recent issue is all in English….
Commission on the Status of Women
Many side events are held at the CSW and this year there were 7000 delegates from all the women’s NGO’s converged on NY…
and our President has written a scathing report of the mishandling of the registrations by the UN…involving long waits and ticketing.
Also about the UN proposing to combine their various women’s agencies under one umbrella.
CEDAW
Nearly all the countries at the UN have signed the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women), but for some, it is only lip service…and many countries have cultural reservations, many of which are
real barriers to women’s advancement……
Australia’s only reservation is about women serving in the front line in the army in battle…
Human Rights Council
I would like to tell you about some of our active representatives at the UN.
In Geneva, Helene Sackstein, is working very actively on Women’s Maternal mortality…making it a Human Rights issue…I have her statement here with the names of other International womens organisations supporting it.
I know that this local Zonta region is also working to provide birthing kits for use in third world countries…a very practical response to a continuing and mainly preventable problem.
World Health Organisation
Gudrun Haupter, from Germany, works very hard on Health issues affecting women and girls…in Geneva at the World Health Organisation. She also has a page of her report in our latest journal on Family planning and safe abortion.
Non Smoking - Climate Change
Soon Young Yoon in NY has made women and smoking her issue and works tirelessly for that. She also organised several side events on Women and 
Climate Change.
Food and Agricultural Organisation
In Rome at the FAO, (Food and Agricultural Organisation), our rep is Bettina Corke, a Scottish widow, who at the moment is living in a tent on the outskirts of L’Aquilla following the earthquake there last year…I was privileged to attend an NGO committee meeting with her there three years ago when I was staying in Rome on my way to Paris to our Board meeting. As she is the only native English speaker she takes the Minutes, as Italian is not an official UN language!!!
My own involvement in IAW was entirely accidental…I had moved to Sydney in the early 1980’s from Nambucca Heads and was doing a couple of days a week in the WEL office in the city…as a volunteer….I had belonged to WEL since its inception in 1972, although most of the time as a country member, (this is how I often visited WEL Coffs Harbour for various Seminars and events). However, I had by then had had my first trip overseas and declared, ‘No more Gothic cathedrals!!!’
Unbeknownst to me, WEL had decided to join the IAW as the Australian Affiliate, (the League of Women Voters of Australia, had by then folded nationally, although it is still operating in Victoria)…and IAW was anxious to have Australia still represented with an affiliated group. WEL was to be admitted that year in July 1982 in Finland.
The thought appealed to me to be present at this auspicious occasion…so being of ‘unsound’ mind, I talked a good friend into accompanying me, and we set off for Finland via Bangkok, Hong Kong, Japan, then the Trans Siberian Railway, this while Russia was still behind the Iron Curtain, and Hard class on a ten day train ride is not recommended.!!!
Anyway, I was blown away by the women I met in Finland, the subjects and bravery they were showing…It’s not 
safe or easy to speak out in many countries of the world…
and also I met Senator Pat Giles, who had journeyed from WEL W.A. to be in Finland too…
Picture: IAW President Pat Giles behind an Italian poster, during a demonstration before the building of the UN, a protest against the war in Iraq in 2003. We all had posters in different languages ...
Immediately, we were both elected to the Board of IAW…but were not really expected to do very much as Board members, except be present once a year in all parts of the world…and show some interest.
Well, all this changed radically in December, 1996, when Pat Giles was installed as IAW President, in Calcutta. And I was asked to do the new job of Membership Secretary, to relieve the Treasurer of some of her burden. (Well, actually, they couldn’t get a Treasurer unless they did).
I had no idea what was involved…I was by now living back in Nambucca Heads.
I owned a very old Apple computer on which I wrote letters, played Bridge and produced a very rough Rotary newsletter every week and that was it.
When the IAW Master file discs reached me in July 1997, I found I had to have a new PC and be ‘online’…I always say, taking on voluntary jobs keeps you right up to date with technology….as nearly all organisations international or local now operate online. (Also, I had to produce labels for the UK Printers for the post out of our journals four times a year…keeping the label files in the order British Post required!!!)
And the result of all this new technology and internet activity is; I can live anywhere on the globe now and still be right in touch…I feel I am helping women all around the world from Nambucca Heads!!! I call the internet, and particularly email, ‘the Women’s Web around the world!’
I have not always been able to attend all the Board meetings since I became involved in the IAW…as we all pay for ourselves…although the Australian delegates always share rooms and stay at the cheapest accommodations, it still costs us a ‘mint’ in airfares to get off the ground.
However, I have attended many Board meetings, Congresses or Seminars, in places as diverse as Finland, Greece, Strasbourg, Melbourne, Calcutta, Vienna, Copenhagen, Odense in Denmark, Malmo in Sweden, New York, Paris twice, Sri Lanka, Ireland, the 2004 Centenary Congress in Berlin/Freiburg, New Delhi, The Hague, and last year in Switzerland.
As the Individual member’s representative on the IAW Board, I decided I would organise our individual members in the UK to meet…in London…
So two years ago, on my way to the Board meeting in The Hague, I organised an afternoon tea in London with our Associated society, the Sri Lankan Women in the UK as the hostesses, to get all our UK individual members and our other Associated society, the Josephine Butler Society, together…it was held right across the road from Buckingham Palace…it went very well with all the various groups networking.
Unfortunately, owing to either family circumstances or lack of finances, I have missed going to Board meetings or Congresses in Athens, Israel, Burkina Faso, Japan, Mauritius, Iceland and the Dominican Republic.
As well as the seminars and Board meetings, deleg
ates manage to be entertained by Presidents, and Governors, including in November, 2007, the President of India, Mrs. Pratibha Patil, the first woman President of India and formerly Governor of Rajasthan…also in 2002, the President of Sri Lanka…
Picture: Mrs. Pratibha Patil with Dr. Manaorama Bawa, President of one of the IAW Afilliates of India.
I said to Pat Giles once while we were being wined and dined in an ancient medieval Governor’s hall in Malmo in 1998…’Who would have thought when we were marching down George St. carrying the Banner on International Womens Day, chanting, ‘Not the church, not the State, Women will decide their fate!!’, that one day we would be entertained in such splendour.
We often take short tours either before or after Board meetings…plus we organise our own short side trips and this way, some of the more memorable things of a frivolous nature I have done, are riding an elephant in both Rajasthan and Sri Lanka, being on top of the Empire State building posing with King Kong…and posing a la Princess Diana, at the Taj Mahal and floating in a boat under Niagara Falls…
I often Eurail to the various cities and as I never travel light, (as I always take all my files and a stationery shop with me), I have had my bags drop all the way down the stairs at Copenhagen station.. Where I hoped someone would make off with them, so I wouldn’t have to face them again.
Picture: backrow from left to right Pat Richardson and Priscilla Todd with the Taj Mahal in the backgound.
However, the most amazing thing I have ever been confronted with, was at a reception at the Governor of West Bengal’s palace…and seeing two large paintings of Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten…I wandered over, and peered into the glass case in front of me…and was standing in front of Gandhi’s ashes!!! To someone of my generation this was a great thrill.
Rosa Manus
I would like to wind up my talk on IAW by telling you about one of our original IAW members and Vice-President, Rosa Manus…a Jewish woman from the Netherlands, who organised many IAW Congresses and meetings from 1904 onwards and worked tirelessly for Peace…organising a huge petition to The League of Nations in the mid-Thirties.
During the thirties she also founded the Womens Library in Amsterdam…and was begged by everyone to leave Holland at the beginning of the Second World War…however, she said she was a Dutch woman and refused.
After the invasion of The Netherlands, the Gestapo deported her to a Concentration camp where she perished soon after
…she was in her sixties then.
They also closed the Womens Library, and took away all the books and records and must have sent them to Berlin….
By a miracle, in 1991 a researcher came upon the Library’s records in a Special Archive in Moscow…where they had been taken by the Russians at the end of the War… The Aletta Jacobs Womens Library in Amsterdam now has a microfiche of all their pre-War archives…. (33,663 of them). However, perhaps one day, all the original books will be found and returned too.
I hope I have given you some idea of the IAW and the history and individuals who have worked for over a century…for justice and equality for women worldwide.
Pat Richardson,
IAW membership Secretary,
P.O.Box 380,
Nambucca Heads. 2448.
N.S.W. AUSTRALIA.
iaw.membership@womenalliance.org
ph. +61 2 65686239.
Various Books by and about IAW and WEL or by their members.
1.‘Woman into Citizen’… book By Arnold Whittick…1979 Athenaeum with Frederick Muller, London 1979….to celebrate 75th Anniversary of IAW. ISBN 0-584-97063-3
2. Leila J. Rupp “Worlds of Women’ The making of an International Women’s Movement…1997 Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01676-3
cloth; ISBN 0-691-01675-5 paperback.
3. 2004. IAW private production, for our Centenary in Berlin 2004.
Produced by Helen Self and Marijke Peters from IAW archives and articles by present members.
4. 2003. Prostitution, Women and misuse of the Law…by Helen Self.
“The Fallen daughters of Eve’. ISBN 0-7146-8371-X paperback.
5. ‘Among the chosen’…life story of Pat Giles…Freemantle Press 2010.
ISBN 978192196022 paperback.
6. ‘Making Women Count’…a History of the Womens Electoral Lobby in Australia….Marian Sawer and Gail Radford. University of NSW Press. 2008
ISBN 978 086840-943 6 paperback.
7. The International Womens News…produced by IAW 3 times a year.
8. IAW Monthly email newsletter…
9. WEB Site www.womenalliance.org. Monthly newsletter is on the web site.
10.‘The Gentle Invaders, Australian Women at Work 1788-1974’
by Edna Ryan and Anne Conlon.
Thomas Nelson (Australia) Limited SBN 17 005041 6 published 1975.
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