| Abstract: | The International Council of Women (ICW), founded in Washington in 1888, was the first international association of bourgeois women. Planned as a federation of women’s organisations united in national associations, it dealt with every question of the social, legal and political status of women. As for earlier national women’s movements, education held a key position; it was the means by which women were striving for emancipation and equal rights of the sexes. As late as 1909, however, when there already existed commitees for peace, law, morality or welfare, and on the other hand the congresses had lost their importance, a commitee for education was constituted. Its goal was to achieve the equality of boys and girls in the educational system and to increase women’s influence on education and school administration, in order to “civilise” children and teach them social responsibility and democracy. In the face of the cultural differences, which influenced the national educational systems as societal sub‐systems, exchange within the commitee for education had been operationalised by detailed research questions. However, the world congresses in Chicago, London and Berlin, which will be dealt with in more detail, still showed the complete variety of controversies in and between the countries. This essay will ask if or how, despite a variety of political and cultural differences, transnational understanding was possible, which educational topics were negotiated – i.e. were for the first time made understandable for an international audience with regard to their national contexts. It will ask in which way this debate was re‐“translated” into national debates and reform processes regarding education, and how then, based on new foundations, it was possible to exert influence there; in which way, on the other hand, did national solutions influence the transnational debate? By the example of these discussions it will be shown in what way these ICW congresses (their programmes and topics, their invitation, science and education policies) contributed to the development of an interplay with achieving national and international competence. This multi‐level communication on the topic of female education policy will be made clear through the examples of three educational fields: nursery school education, child study, as well as university studies for women and “female science”. |
