The Rise of Women's Transnational Activism by Marie Sandell

Author:Marie Sandell [Sandell, Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780755625673
Google: ZLuczQEACAAJ
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2015-01-15T04:33:15+00:00

The first stop of the WILPF delegation was Port Said, from where Pye's first letter to WILPF's paper Pax International was sent. The purpose behind WILPF's decision to publish letters from both Pye and Drevet during their east Asia journey in its organisational newspaper, Pax, was to enable its members in different parts of the world, who had made the tour possible through their financial support, to follow their delegates' every move. In her first letter, Pye wrote about their journey on board the Cap St Jacques, which she described as a simple and friendly boat. She also remarked that others on board had expressed interest in their mission. During the first stage of their journey, Pye and Drevet were accompanied and assisted by Mr Duong van Giao, an Indochinese man who had attended the WILPF Summer School in 1927. Once the WILPF officers reached Saigon, they were met by a delegation of people representing all parties and some women. However, there did not seem to be any organised groups of women in the part of the country that they visited.34 Thus, the absence of pre-existing contacts here meant that, like earlier ‘world tours’, this mission perhaps still contained an element of ‘fact-finding’, linked in part to WILPF's later establishment, which meant that, unlike its older counterparts, it was still involved in this initial stage of travel by the late 1920s.

In China, Pye and Drevet were joined by Mrs Grover Clark, the third WILPF delegate who was from the United States but resident in China and a fluent speaker of Chinese. In Shanghai, they met prominent individuals such as the new Nationalist leader, Chiang Kaishek, Mrs Chiang Kaishek and Mrs H.H. Kung (both sisters of the widow of the former Nationalist leader Sun Yat Sen), Dr Margaret Lin, president of the Chinese Women's Temperance Union, and Miss Wu, the matron of the Chinese Red Cross Hospital, as well as a group of ten leading Chinese women. Pye claimed that doors opened in all directions to them in China, as they were not only introduced to politicians and prominent people but also shown around the cities. For example, in Shanghai, they visited two schools, the McTyeire School and the Fu Yan University. While the former was under American management and had 300 girl pupils, who mainly belonged to Chinese aristocratic families, the latter was a Chinese institution where they had the opportunity to give their message to about 300 young men.35 Pye remarked about the McTyeire School pupils that many would ‘certainly […] be leaders in the women's movement in the future’,36 reinforcing the extent to which importance was attached to a Western-style education by international women's organisations. After their visit, the principal of the school received a letter written by the girls addressed ‘To our Sisters in the West’,37 suggesting that the visit of the WILPF delegation had made a distinct impression on these young female Chinese minds.

After Shanghai the delegation went on to Nanking, about which Drevet wrote in

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