Abstract

"How the International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) Contributed to Redefine the Boundaries of Women's Work during the Interwar Period"

Zoé Seuret, University of Lausanne (zoe.seuret@unil.ch), Stéphanie Ginalski, University of Lausanne (stephanie.ginalski@unil.ch)

Founded in Geneva in 1930, The International Federation of Business and Professional Women (IFBPW) aimed to bring together women in liberal and commercial professions from various countries in order to improve their position in the economic world. Convinced that gender equality could not be achieved without economic equality and professional emancipation, IFBPW members worked across borders to promote better representation of women in business and decision-making positions, defend equal pay and combat gender discrimination in the workplace. During the interwar period, the IFBPW thus shaped a transnational business feminism that would become dominant in the last decades of the 20th century.
Situated at the intersection of women's and gender history, business history and transnational history, this paper revisits the emergence of the IFBPW and examines how it contributed to redefining the boundaries of women's work during the interwar period. More specifically it discusses how the IFBPW promoted its interests in interaction with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on a key issue: the relaxation of the ban on night work for women. To do so, this contribution draws on archival documents of the IFBPW and the ILO.