Second World, Second Sex examines the three defining conferences of the United Nations Decade for Women: Mexico City, 1975; Copenhagen, 1980; and Nairobi, 1985. In exploring the preparations for and outcomes of these gatherings, Kristen Ghodsee restores to the history of the twentieth-century women's movement the contributions of socialist women, particularly Bulgarian ones. Throughout the Decade, the Committee of the Bulgarian Women's Movement (CBWM) was the de facto leader of the eastern bloc. Second World, Second Sex is more than a compensatory account of its members’ activities, however. It also reveals much about the relationship between women of the eastern bloc and developing countries (represented by non-aligned but left-leaning Zambia). Placing women of the Second and Third Worlds side by side, Ghodsee casts the Cold War as a time of cooperation and great strides for women in the realms of international diplomacy and gender equality, especially in countries not preoccupied with the threat of communism.
Signaling that women's rights had become another front in the Cold War, all women who attended the official UN meetings were directed by their government. By 1975, the Bulgarian Communist Party and the Zambian United National Independence Party had familiarized members of their respective women's organizations—the CBWM and the Women's League (WL)—with forging contacts abroad and discussing not only women's issues, but also politicized ones like those that would constitute the themes of the Decade: equality, development, and peace. In addition, Bulgarian and Zambian women had similar viewpoints on these matters; they also generally diverged from the individualism of western feminism in recognizing difference between the sexes and advocating state support for combining motherhood with paid employment.
As Ghodsee demonstrates, women of the Second and Third Worlds played an essential role in framing the international debate about women's issues, and their perspectives permeated the UN conference documents. They also placed global affairs on the agenda, critiquing policies like apartheid, much to the protest of the United States. Ultimately, relational feminism triumphed over emphasis on equal opportunity, as did the notion that economic, racial, and gender injustices were intersecting.
Despite their successes, women of the eastern bloc and developing countries were dismissed as tools of authoritarian regimes by both contemporaries and scholars. In what is partly a rigorous historiographical exercise, Ghodsee devotes Part I of her book to explaining this, addressing the continuing contempt for communism that had led the US government during the Cold War to rally the patriarchal family and to persecute leftist feminists who challenged the existing order. She also delves into subjects like the status of women under different systems and varying discourses about emancipation.
Women's liberation in Bulgaria and Zambia was certainly incomplete. Nevertheless, Ghodsee reminds us, Bulgarian women enjoyed numerous gains in education, employment, legal equality, reproductive rights, and protections for mothers, which made them models for the Third World. Meanwhile, like the CBWM, the WL was active in organizing women to increase their skills and participation in public life. Throughout, Bulgarian women leveraged socialist theory about gender equality to shape policy, while Zambian women inserted their own claims among those for national liberation.
Only after delineating the interpretative implications of focusing on achievements and local circumstances does Ghodsee proceed to her study of the UN conferences. This approach aligns with the larger intention of her book, to serve as “a political act of resistance against an entrenched narrative that downplays and delegitimizes the contributions of women from the state socialist countries and their . . . allies in the developing world” (242). One wonders if this alliance was entirely copasetic and its full global impact is not born out here—impossible in roughly 300 pages. That said, this is a significant work in the burgeoning field of research on Second-Third World relations. Incorporating findings from her earlier publications on the subject, it is among the first monographs to depict the triumphs of women of the east and south on the world stage during the Cold War. Drawing upon sources amassed on three continents, it also provides a template for navigating transnational history and studying women in marginalized parts of the world. Interrogating why the activities of women in countries with strong states promoting gender equality should be deemed inauthentic vis-à-vis those in democracies that perpetuate patriarchal norms, alongside rendering the Cold War as a battle between not just capitalism and communism but also competing visions of feminism, Second World, Second Sex is essential reading for anyone in any field interested in women's activism in the twentieth century.
