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AbstractThis article addresses women's cross-border internationalist connections within the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), focusing on the exchanges between women's organizations in socialist Yugoslavia and the Global South during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as during the UN Decade for Women (1975–1985). As a result of the Soviet-Yugoslav split, Yugoslavia was expelled from the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), the main organization federating antifascist, communist, and socialist women, in 1949. To overcome international isolation, Yugoslav representatives established their own bilateral connections with women's organizations internationally, particularly in the Global South. Throughout the Cold War, the main figure behind women's internationalism in Yugoslavia was Vida Tomšič (1913–1998), a former partisan and leading politician, trained as a lawyer, who had a fundamental role both in nonaligned and UN settings. In this article, I further analyze Vida Tomšič's visits to India, and examine her correspondence with Indian scholar and Women's Studies pioneer Vina Mazumdar (1927–2013). The exchanges between Vina and Vida, as they amicably addressed each other, exemplify the significance of the alliance between activists from socialist countries and activists from the Global South during the UN Decade for Women.

Jocelyn Olcott, International Women's Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History, Oxford University Press, 2017, 352 pp., $34.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-19532-768-7.Kristen Ghodsee, Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019, 306 pp. $25.35 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-47800-181-2.

The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women's transnationalism and women's agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women's activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in order to encompass multiple forms of women's political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women's individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan's and Vida Tomšič's stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women's political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women's activism within existing national and international institutions. ; Ovaj ogled se uklju ču je u ak tu el ne ras pra ve o žen skom tran sna ci o na li zmu i mo ći de lo va nja, raz ma tra ju ći okol no sti u ko ji ma se odr ža la pr va kon fe ren ci ja u okvi ru UN de ka de že na, odr ža ne u Mek si ko Si ti ju 1975. go di ne, s po seb nim osvr tom na spe ci fič ni kon tekst hlad no ra tov ske ge o po li ti ke. Oslu šku ju ći raz li či te fe mi ni stič ke i ak ti vi stič ke gla so ve, s na gla skom na ma nje vi dlji vim an ti im pe ri ja li stič kim, ne svr stanim i so ci ja li stič kim ge ne a lo gi ja ma žen skog ak ti vi zma, ogled se za la že za pre i spi tiva nje za pad ne pa ra dig me fe mi ni stič ke pro iz vod nje zna nja. Reč je o po ku ša ju da se ob u hva te vi še stru ke for me žen ske po li tič ke mo ći de lo va nja, ko je se ne mo gu iz razi ti li be ral nom kon cep ci jom in di vi du al ne auto no mi je že na od dr ža ve. Po re đe njem shva ta nja ko ja su to kom kon fe ren ci je iz ne le Be ti Fri dan i Vi da Tom šič, u tek stu se po ka zu je da je po li tič ka moć de lo va nja že na to kom Hlad nog ra ta ima la raz li či te for me, ko je su ob u hva ta le i od bi ja nje i pri hva ta nje žen skog ak ti vi zma u po sto je ćim na ci o nal nim i me đu na rod nim in sti tu ci ja ma.

The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women?s transnationalism and
women?s agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women
held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War
geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists
voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned
and socialist genealogies of women?s activism expressed during the meeting,
the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production
needs to be revisited, in order to encompass multiple forms of women?s
political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of
women?s individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan?s
and Vida Tomsic?s stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that
women?s political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which
included both the refusal and the acceptance of women?s activism within
existing national and international institutions.

This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engaged in revolutionary politics during and after the Second World War: Luciana Castellina ( La scoperta del mondo, 2011), Bianca Guidetti Serra ( Bianca la rossa, 2009), Marisa Ombra (La bella politico, 2010), Marisa Rodano ( Del mutare dei tempi, 2008) and Rossana Rossanda (La ragazza del secolo scorso, 2005). In these autobiographies, personal narratives of passionate engagement are entangled with the urgency of antifascist resistance, and with the social and political conflicts that traversed Cold War Italy. Women's multiple forms of political engagement within the Italian Communist Party are analysed, as well as the contradictory, ambivalent connection between Western European communist activists and Eastern European socialist regimes. The intersections between antifascist, communist and women's rights politics are also explored, since some of the authors were leaders of the nation-wide left-wing Union of Italian Women. The autobiographies tell the story of an antifascist, left-wing 'middle wave' that fought pioneering battles for women's political and social rights, and narrate its complex, conflictual encounter with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. These writings, therefore, allow us to reflect on changes in gendered subjectivities and revolutionary politics across time and generations.