ΤΟ ΖΗΤΗΜΑ ΤΗΣ ΠΡΟΣΤΑΣΙΑΣ ΤΗΣ ΜΗΤΕΡΑΣ ΚΑΙ ΤΟΥ ΠΑΙΔΙΟΥ ΣΕ ΔΙΕΘΝΕΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΡΙΦΕΡΕΙΑΚΕΣ ΠΡΩΤΟΒΟΥΛΙΕΣ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΡΙΟΔΟ ΤΟΥ ΜΕΣΟΠΟΛΕΜΟΥ. Ο ΛΟΓΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΔΩΝ ΣΟΣΙΑΛΙΣΤΡΙΩΝ

Abstract

Despite the anemic presence of a social-democratic tradition in Greece, the interwar socialist women socialists articulated their perspective on the women’s issue and delineated their stance both in regards to “bourgeois feminism” and the communists of the time. The article analyses the discourse articulated by the Socialist Women’s Group (SWG) on the protection of motherhood and childhood and presented in international meetings and conferences. Motherhood and childhood occupied a dominant position in the interventions by the socialist women, who highlighted social reproduction as an important parameter to be studied. In tandem, these issues attracted considerable attention both by the women’s movement and the peace movement that developed after the WWI. The socialist women raised the issues of motherhood and childhood protection in relation to the struggle for the expansion of social protection as an antidote to ill health and poverty. The issues of motherhood, women’s rights in the context of marriage, the rights of working mothers, the legal status of children and the safeguarding of children’s rights in health and education became the key axes of the socialist women movement’s interventions. The international initiatives, joined by SWG, primarily developed by the women’s movement in the context of the Labour and Socialist International. In tandem, the SWG kept up with the activities of non-socialist feminist organizations, such as the Little Entente of Women or the domestic Hellenic League for Women's Rights, in an attempt, on the one hand, to build political alliances and, on the other, to establish and delineate a socialist perspective on the protection of motherhood and childhood distinct from other domestic and international movements.