Mediating Women: The International Council of Women and the rise of (trans)national Broadcasting.

Abstract

In the 1930s, the International Council of Women (ICW) showed a particular interest in the development of broadcasting, culminating in the creation of the ICW Broadcasting Committee in 1936. This article explores the ICW’s broadcasting activities; focussing in on the organisation’s approach to radio as it emerged in the late 1920s and the 1930s. It looks at the ways in which the ICW's internationalist agenda both reflected and contradicted nationalist conceptions of the medium through the identities of three women who were involved: the internationalist French-American Laura Dreyfus-Barney; the Swedish journalist and women’s rights campaigner, Margareta von Konow; and the ‘model fascist’, the Italian mathematician Maria Castellani. This in turn reveals the range and scope of ICW feminisms; the roles of its members as both activists and professionals; how women’s radio expertise was defined; and finally, how radio broadcasting from an early stage became a key part of ICW strategy.