Mothers of Two Children: Gender and the Cold War in French Trusteeships, 1947–58

This paper examines how decolonization and the Cold War shaped United Nations debates over “women’s status” in the twilight of the French Union, focusing on an electoral reform to expand voting rights to "mothers of two children” in the French Trusteeships of Cameroon and Togo. The debate over this seemingly marginal provision became mired in broader conflicts about gender, sovereignty, and democracy across the French administration and within UN organizations such as the Trusteeship Council, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Fourth Committee on Decolonization, and the General Assembly. Across these bodies and groups, French representatives found the racialized and gendered limits of their citizenship policies supported and attacked by colleagues, some of whom referenced their own national histories of colonization (including - as in the case of Syria and Haiti - by the French). However, identities and affiliations could be blurry, as delegates from metropoles and formerly colonized territories expressed combinations of critique and support of French policies about women across the French Union. Delegates representing a range of Cold War alignments (and non-alignments) questioned the scope and purpose of the "two children" reform, asking if it also applied to white European women and what exactly it was about the birth of a second child that "endowed women with discernment in political matters.” Others raised concerns about how such a change might challenge gender roles (and therefore political stability) within "traditional societies," including the risk of creating "inverted" households consisting of a voting woman and her disenfranchised husband. In examining the development and debate over this reform, the paper considers the role of international institutions within imperialist feminism, Cold War anticolonialism, and French efforts to sustain their global empire.