During the past few decades, postcolonial and decolonial feminism, as well as Afro feminism, have strongly contributed to enabling us to rethink encounters and alliances between women at the transnational level. Situated in this context, Pascale Barthélémy's in-depth historical research on French and African women aims to explore the origins of political solidarity between Black, White, and Métis women in contexts characterized by the violence of the colonial system. In doing so, Barthélémy has contributed to the few studies that have emphasized the political mobilization of African women in connection with the rest of the world, while not failing to acknowledge the pioneering work in this perspective by Meredith Terretta, among others. On the other hand, by adopting a perspective of transnational and connected history, she engages in the historiographical debate with authors such as Francisca De Haan, Celia Donert, and Yulia Gradskova, who have contributed to the study of women's movements and women's organizations, focusing on the role of women as political agents and on their internationalization, thus overcoming a vision limited to nation states or colonies. The careful analysis and well-argued interpretations are based on a wide variety of sources – institutional, private, press, images, interviews collected during extensive archival work in France, Belgium, Senegal, Mali, Italy, and the Netherlands, which also provided the images of the book's rich iconographic contribution.
The period studied is between 1944, when French female citizens obtained the right to vote and stand for election, and the First Conference of All African Women (Dar es-Salaam, 1962). The focus is on how sisterhood and colonialism interacted in creating connections marked by solidarity, as well as by indifference and hostility. In the first chapter, Barthélémy shows the resistance, if not outright suspicion, caused by the process of granting the right to vote to French women and colonized women in Africa, between 1943 and 1945. The author focuses on the cases of Algeria, Congo, and Senegal to argue that after World War II, when French women and the colonized men obtained the right to vote, the colonized women remained a “blind spot” in the legislation (in the case of Algeria) or became an opportunity to continue legitimizing, by different means, colonial rule (as demonstrated especially by the “imperialist feminism” of the nun Marie-André du Sacre Coeur). The “unprecedented political mobilization” (p. 46) in Senegal, in the context of the elections in the municipalities of Dakar-Gorée, Saint-Louis, and Rufisque, shows the resistance to the colonized women's right to vote and the attitude of French women in Senegal, most of whom expressed apathy or hostility towards the voting rights of Senegalese women.
Chapter Two introduces the two women's associations created between 1945 and 1946 with the aims of uniting women of the whole world and of creating links of solidarity and sisterhood: the Women's Democratic International Federation (WIDF) and the Association of French Union's Women (AFUW). In tracing the political biographies of activists who participated in the two organizations, such as Eugénie Cotton, Jeannette Vermeersch, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, Jean Vialle, and Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux, Barthélémy demonstrates their political differences – women participating in the WIDF were closer to the PCF (Parti Communiste Français), or left-wing trade unions, while the AFUW was closer to the Christian Democrats and to the SFIO (Section française de l'internationale ouvrière) – but also their common inheritance from their wartime experiences of resistance and underground struggle.
Soon after their foundation, both organizations had to confront new kinds of demands from colonized peoples and their struggle against European domination, addressed in Chapter Three, which explains how the AFUW and WIDF dealt with the issue of colonial violence and anti-colonialism, in the decade 1945–1955. By analysing an extensive apparatus of documentary sources, the author shows how the WIDF, in accordance with the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), defended the right of people to self-determination, while the AFUW's solidarity with African women was based rather on “neutrality” so as not to have to emphasize colonial violence or take a stand for the end of colonial rule of France, a position that also coincided with the creation of a “new female imperialism” (p. 88). Chapter Four is dedicated to the illustration of the journeys that African women undertook around the world from the late 1940s onwards, traceable thank to memoirs, the press, and correspondence. By focusing especially on women from Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, the author highlights the political activism of women not only in existing political formations, such as the African Democratic Assembly (Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, RDA), but also through the creation of separate committees. Through the biographies of Célestine Ouezzin Coulibaly, Fatou Guèye, Hane Magatte, and Marianne D'Erneville, Barthélémy underlines women's dedication to national and international activities, in the difficult conditions caused by the administrative obstacles and the refusal of permission to travel abroad to attend WIDF meetings, and the dramatic repression. An example of the latter is the reaction against a demonstration organized by thousands of women in December 1949 at the Grand-Bassam prison to protest the arrest of RDA members, a repression that ended with the arrest of three women and the conviction of two of them.
In the context of the travels and activism of African women from French West Africa (Afrique occidentale française, AOF) and from Equatorial French Africa (Afrique equatorial française, AEF), African and European women established their contacts, relationships, and friendships. Chapters Five and Six focus on the objectives and practices of the AFUW and WIDF, the links established by women from the “metropole” and from “overseas”, and the projection of African women in the transnational activism during the Cold War. Concerning the role of the AFUW, the author provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which the association carried forward an idea of Europe's civilizing mission towards the colonies, claiming the role of moralizing African societies; but also of how the AFUW's idea of colonialism lay on a frontier between conservatism and development, being full of ambivalence. In France, the association also promoted political and social meetings between French women and representatives of the African women's elite, while in Africa it attended meetings of local women's committees – the photograph on the cover, which we also find on page 182, depicts just such an AFUW committee in Porto Novo – where, however, except in Madagascar, African women were a minority.
While the AFUW, through the promotion of social and development activities, did not question European colonialism, from the second half of the 1950s the WIDF radicalized its discourse, denouncing colonial violence. With a focus on the participation of African women in the first world conference of women workers (Budapest, 1956), the author shows how the meeting was an opportunity to denounce the double discrimination of African women, and the combination of anti-colonial struggle and women's rights, but also the living and working conditions of women workers in their respective countries, and their education. Thus, Barthélémy illustrates how, while the AFUW in the late 1950s continued to focus on the role of women – a women's elite, that is – to ensure a conflict-free transition and the emergence of the new nation states, the WIDF used world congresses and the publication Women of the Whole World to propagandize the idea of combining anti-colonial struggles, world peace, and women's rights. When, in 1960, the AFUW disappeared, this focus and the political activity of women like Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux (introduced in Chapter One) found continuity in the International Council of Women (ICW). In this scenario, new women's groups sprang up in Africa, as was the case with the Senegal women's union, the French Sudan women's committee, and the West African women's union (Union des femmes de l'Ouest African, UFOA), which came out of a combination of local politics and international contacts. In this perspective, the author emphasizes the speech by Loffo Camara in 1959 at the first congress of the UFOA (p. 222).
Barthélémy dedicates her last chapter to the post-independence period from 1960 to 1962 and the respective role of the ICW, and of the WIDF, mostly in Africa, because that was where international meetings were held. The author retraces the study days organized by the UN (December 1960, Addis Ababa) and the meeting of women's associations in Africa (July 1962, Yaoundé), as well as the birth of the first national unions of African women. The analysis outlines a scenario of internal agreements and tensions, of challenges at the national and international levels, and above all the role that, through personal and political relationships, the ICW inherited from the AFUW and its idea of women's rights, especially at the level of couples and families. On the other hand, the chapter demonstrates how, from 1960 onwards, the WIDF was increasingly oriented towards emphasizing the claims of African women, mostly through Women of the Whole World, which hosted articles by African activists about daily life, family responsibilities, and militancy, as exemplified in the case of Sira Diop (p. 265). The author also stresses the commitment of African women at the transnational level, in the African–Asian women's conference (Cairo, December 1960), and in the construction of the pan-African women's union, renamed the Pan-African Women's Organization (PAWO) in 1974.
This book is of great value for historians on women's movements across national borders and will inspire scholars to study the Cold War period and anti-colonialism from the perspective of French and African women's politics. The balance between the individual trajectories of women and the collective histories of groups and associations also stands out, offering avenues for research into the points of contact and ambivalence in the political biographies of individual activists and in collective groups. What is missing, in my opinion, is also the main innovation in the field of research on women's activism. The author does not contextualize the politics of women's groups in the political landscape of existing parties. The lack of contextualization does not mean ignorance of political parties on the part of the author; for instance, the documentary references also cover the PCF (Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Bobigny) and the RDA (Archives nationales du Sénégal). However, the starting point of the research seems not to be the derivation or the more or less strong connection of women's groups with existing political parties, but the relationship between forms of women's activism in a context of colonialism and anti-colonialism.
This approach allows for a transnational perspective – in line with the postcolonial, decolonial, and Afro-feminist literature of recent decades – not only because the author studies more than one national context, but also because she does not confine individual biographies or group histories within the interpretation of a national case nor, indeed, within the context of the link to a political party.
