FROM INTERNATIONAL FEMINISM TO FEMINIST INTERNATIONALISM

Alva Myrdal, co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982, developed her diplomatic skills and international loyalties in women's movements between the wars and during World War II. She considered feminism a global enterprise whose goals were the enhancement of educational, political, and economic opportunities for women everywhere. Working with both the Swedish Social Democratic Women's Association and the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, she tried to reconcile mothers'paid employment with children's rights to excellent care. During World War I1 her efforts to receive and protect refugees in neutral Sweden tranrformed her into a feminist internarionalist. As the leading woman in the UN Secretariat and at UNESCO in the early 1950s, she enlisted women's organizations to support UN aid to developing narions, cct the same time insisting tha! equal opportuniiy for women was essential to the peaceful progress anddecent life that all people needed.