The transnational factor: The beginnings of South Africa’s women’s movement
Abstract
The South African women’s movement had its origins in the Cape, but it
also had a strong transnational relationship with countries such as the United
Kingdom and the United States. The earliest formally created women’s
organisation in the country, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU), established in 1889, focused on forging a pure society that was
liberated from the so-called constraints and perils of liquor. By 1892, the
WCTU had formed a franchise department in response to the absence of
female enfranchisement in the Cape, therefore promoting women’s national
and international suffrage. The WCTU encouraged the establishment of
other women’s organisations such as the Women’s Enfranchisement League
(WEL) in 1907, which was solely dedicated to the promotion and creation of
women’s suffrage. This article aims to understand the international links of the
WCTU and WEL as the first two women’s organisations in the Cape Colony.
It does so through the framework of transnationalism and also considers the
transnational influence on further developments in South Africa’s women’s
movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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