Dr. Alexandria Ruble
Interviewee: Dr. Alexandria Ruble
Interviewer: Johanna Bringhurst
Description: Johanna is joined by European historian Dr. Alexandria Ruble from the University of Idaho to learn about the surprising history of women’s rights in Germany after World War II. Dr. Alexandria N. Ruble is an assistant professor of European history at the University of Idaho. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Her research focuses on central Europe, Germany, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the Cold War, and women’s and gender history. Her first book, Entangled Emancipation: Women’s Rights in Cold War Germany, was published in December 2023 by University of Toronto Press.
Date: 2024-02-07
Topics:
The visual topic map is hidden for screen reader users. Please use the "Filter by Topic" dropdown menu or search box to find specific content in the transcript.
Johanna Bringhurst: Hello everyone, and welcome to context. This program is brought to you by the Idaho Humanities Council with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The views expressed here today do not necessarily represent those of the IHC or the NEH. My name is Johanna Bringhurst, and joining us today is Doctor Alexandria N. Ruble. Doctor Ruble is an assistant professor of European history at the University of Idaho.
She earned her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Her research focuses on Central Europe, Germany, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the Cold War, and women's and gender history. Her first book, Entangled Emancipation: Women's Rights in Cold War Germany, was published in December 2023 by University of Toronto Press. Doctor Ruble, thank you for joining me today.
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah, thank you for the invitation. I'm really excited to do this.
Johanna Bringhurst: So your research as a European historian has focused on Germany, the Holocaust, the Cold War and women's history. What interests you about those ideas and that time and place?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. thank you for that. So, I'll kind of start with my origin story, if you will, of, well, I initially became interested in, postwar Europe, in Germany and also, you know, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust while I was studying abroad in Prague for a semester. And, while we were there, we visited a few concentration camps, including Auschwitz.
And that certainly opened my eyes more to the horrors of the Holocaust and what Nazi Germany had done to Europe. You know, beyond what I'd already read or what I'd already learned but the other thing that, I think was really transformative for me was that we visited cities like Berlin and Dresden and going there and kind of being on the ground and also being in Prague, which was under the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
I think really opened my eyes to just the postwar recovery that happened. And it raises a lot of questions for me about how Europeans and Germans specifically. at that point, I was also minoring in German, so I had some interest in the culture and the language. but it raised all these questions for, you know, how did Europeans and Germans begin to recover from such vast destruction, that was wreaked upon their continent?
and I wanted to find answers to those questions. And, and I was very struck by a couple of different things. But one of the things that that really, I think stuck with me at that time was this argument that Germans had somehow managed to find the right balance after the war, that they had learned from the mistakes of their destructive Nazi past, that they could find stability and democracy while also being economically prosperous, that somehow they could lead Europe into an era of peace and that they would no longer go to war anymore.
and of course, the then the Cold War adds this other layer to that because, it does divide Germany into two states somewhat artificially. so for my own research, this provides a really interesting perspective, because we can trace how a place with a common legal, political and cultural background ends up going on divergent paths and, and how it comes back together.
so that's all to say that, you know, then, like, I, I kind of found this other lens of what role do women and gender play in that, in that process of recovery and, in postwar Germany, there are an estimated 7 million more women than men. and they were, they were called, the Trummerfrauen, women of the rubble.
They would literally go out in the streets and pick up the rubble and start rebuilding Germany. So kind of those images stuck with me, and it made me think a lot about, you know, how do these different things intersect? How do they play into that process of recovery? you know, what role does that play in, especially in West Germany at democratizing, the state and so on?
so that's how all these things started to come together. but I'll, I'll wrap up this by saying that my interest more recently, I think, has been revived by recent events in Europe. and these are starting to raise new questions of not how did Europe become stable, but rather can Europe and Germany specifically maintain that stability?
will Germany be drawn into another continental or global war? and what is that going to mean for it going forward?
Johanna Bringhurst: You sound like, the quintessential historian looking at issues today by going back in time to see what knowledge we can gain. So you have written quite a bit about women's rights in the East and West Germany after World War Two, and during those early years when the Cold War was heating up, before the Nazi Party took control of Germany in 1933, what rights did women in Germany have?
what was life like for German women?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. so prior to 1933, women's rights were fairly limited in Germany in many ways. so in my specific research, I look at civil law and I look at the Civil Code, which was passed, in 1900, or rather, it was passed in 1896. It's implemented in 1900. so in that particular realm of law and society, women, married women specifically were treated as second class citizens.
so just as a few examples of what that very patriarchal law puts into place, husbands could make all decisions for their wives. Married women had no control of their own property. they technically didn't have full custody of their children either. so they're essentially treated as dependents of their husbands rather than full citizens. there are some other things to,
They could only work if men at that stage work part time if men gave them written permission. so you could go down the list, but these these are very restrictive laws. and so in that regard, married women, especially, are not granted any kind of equality before the law. in other regards, though, at least in that that same time period, women were gaining more rights.
in 1908, for instance, women were finally allowed to join political parties for the first time. prior to this point, women could join, like independent women's associations, and usually those would be linked in some way to a profession or maybe a specific, like advocacy cause, but for the most part, you know, women were not allowed to be a formally politically engaged.
but even at that stage, they could join political parties. They still couldn't vote. so that doesn't come until 1919. so after World War one, and at the beginning of the Weimar Republic, that women are finally granted the right to vote. and at this point, they're also granted the right to enter public office, to serve in government.
and so in that regard, women's rights are changing on some fronts, are not changing everywhere. so this creates a bit of a discrepancy, in terms of thinking about what life was really like for German women on the ground. I would say that that varies quite a bit by social class. for one thing, it can also depend a lot on, especially in a postwar environment, whether or not their husbands came home, if they were now single, if they were widowed, if they had children, all of that would matter quite a bit for women.
and some of the research I've done looking at, married women and to what extent civil war affected their lives. again, for some women, depending on their political or social class background, the law, even if it said, for example, men have the right to restrict their wives from working. for some couples, especially if they were working class, that simply wasn't a reality.
The reality was she was going to go work, right, in order to support the family. so in some cases, we find that they just were not following what the law said. for other milieus of society, they were following the law to it, to you.
Johanna Bringhurst: So under Nazi rule, what rights did women have and how were women viewed?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. So then thinking about kind of the the next stage of German history, if you will. there's a few ways to think about how Nazis viewed women. certainly they viewed women across the board as inferior to men, at least in the public sphere. hence removing the rights that women had gained in the prior decades. under the German Empire and then under the Republic, and these rights in many ways had started to level the playing field.
I won't argue that they were any way close to leveling it, but they had started to, so under Nazi rule, women's rights were restricted. so, for example, the women's associations that I had referred to, in my last response, those were formally dissolved and the only organization that women could formally join were the Nazi women's organization, the Fraulein Schaft.
so at this stage, two women were no longer allowed to serve in public office in any way. they were completely removed from the government, or positions of leadership. so, you know, largely speaking, the Nazis relegate women to the private sphere. and there's kind of this famous phrase, right, the children kitchen church. Right. The three K's.
this isn't necessarily a new idea in Germany. This is something that had originated under the German Empire. but we most associate with the Nazis, and they're the ones who take this to its, right to its extreme. so, you know, going along with that, right? The Nazis are, you know, they're reducing women very much to this kind of private domestic sphere.
but they're also thinking about women, largely in reproductive terms. and from their perspective, according to their ideology, you know, racially pure. And the scare quotes are very important here. racially pure women only serve their nation by reproducing and becoming mothers, and they incentivize this through a number of ways, through subsidies, even through metals, for women who, you know, had abundant families.
and so I think it's also important to thinking about how they viewed women to understand that, for so-called racially, un-pure women, that they viewed these women as a threat, to their regime. So their reproduction, their ability to marry, was very much restricted. particularly if they were married to Jewish men or planning to marry Jewish men.
and, you know, and vice versa, Jewish women were in many ways restricted. all that said, to kind of wrap up this answer a little bit, even though the ideology dictated that women were inferior, that they were supposed to be relegated to the private sphere, that they had separate gender roles, that were very different from the ones men were occupying.
you know, men were the brave soldiers, right, who were martyrs for sacrificing themselves for the nation. the Nazis still yielded to pragmatism at certain points, especially as World War Two goes on. so even though, for example, women were largely encouraged to leave the workforce at an earlier stage in the Nazi regime, they were encouraged to be the caretakers.
Well, as more men went off and became casualties of war. the Nazis lifted some of those restrictions in order to make sure that women could work in factories to continue the war effort. So, you know, there's a certain sense there that the ideology isn't what dictates everything all the time, right?
Johanna Bringhurst: There's practical consideration. Absolutely. when the war ended in 1945 and the Nazi Party lost power, Germany, as you know, kind of split into two different nation states. What happened with women's rights in East Germany and Western Renee?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. well, this is the subject of my book. So I think that this is a rather remarkable story, but, I will say that there's about, I would say like three different layers to kind of understanding what happens to women's rights after after 1945. And the first thing, when I started researching this project, that really struck me.
That was just so remarkable, is that in both states, when they finally formally separate in 1949, they passed these new provisional constitutions, and both states have constitutions with an equal rights clause embedded in it. and many states in the United States didn't even ratify that. Right. We don't have an equal rights clause in our own constitution.
So that was really my, you know, really eye opening to me. But both of them include this equal rights clause that says, almost verbatim, it's the same phrase men and women have equal rights. So the highest laws of their respective lands in 1949 are already promising this to their citizens. But how they interpret this clause, varies quite a bit between East and West Germany according to their respective ideologies.
so in East Germany, for instance, you know, this was a communist state, right? It is a one party state. there's more, I would say not maybe to a complete sense, but there's more of a sense of, of equality in that both men and women are expected to work full time. they are both expected to be equal caretakers of their children.
They're both expected to contribute to domestic duties. That doesn't mean that it always plays out that way on the ground, as some of my research shows. But there is, in terms of the law, there, right, the way that the law is written, that is the expectation. And there are certain incentives in society. There's always a higher, number of women in full time positions in East Germany that's not barred by law, for instance.
so all of that, that, that prior civil law that had governed Germany for, for decades up until this point, goes away in West Germany. However, the law that even though the Constitution says that men and women are supposed to have equal rights, civil law, in the 1950s, it's expanded. So they do get rid of some of the provisions I had referred to earlier, such as men could make all decisions for their wives.
but they retain some of the other provisions. for instance, women at this point in time can only work outside the home if it's reconcilable with their, domestic or childbearing duties. so in some senses, we're seeing women in the West gaining more rights in some ways or not. And that's because the governing ideology of the liberal democratic and capitalist West Germany was that, you know, according to them, they're restoring society to, a very traditional structure.
So if East Germany is all about, you know, we're creating something new, we're creating something radically egalitarian and different. This is what the Eastern Bloc and this is what the Soviet Union are doing. The West is going in the opposite direction of saying, you know, we're returning to tradition. We're returning to our roots. Therefore, we are implementing a male breadwinner family model with a female homemaker and then later on, part time worker.
so we start to see women's rights growing in very different ways. but the third thing is that, as I've alluded to to two, is that women's rights don't always match with what the law right is dictating. and it's fascinating because even in East Germany, which, you know, it's kind of as I've said, they've argued, they're arguing that they're creating something totally new.
there's a lot of older generations of men and women who, at this point in the 40s and 50s, they've already lived through several decades of German history. they're not interested in changing their behaviors or practices. They're not interested in being so-called good socialist citizens. So, in this in these cases, we see a lot of them still adhering to these old gender roles, to these kind of culturally conservative beliefs.
I have one case in my book of, a young woman. She's probably in her early 20s, I would say, in the late 1960s. she goes off to university and she gets pregnant. She's not married, but her parents tell her, well, you have to keep the baby, and you have to marry the father. the way that the law is written, she doesn't have to. Right, all of that.
right,has been thrown out. so she's very set on, you know. Oh, I'm this young, right, this young woman who's grown up in East Germany. I'm just. I'm just going to raise the child on my own. The state will support me. I don't need to stay with the father, but her parents really push her. so you can kind of see, in that case that even though, legally speaking, she doesn't have to do any of these things anymore.
They're still very much governed, by that kind of mindset.
Johanna Bringhurst: By tradition.
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah, absolutely.
Johanna Bringhurst: Who are some of the central figures at this time that were involved in these changes?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. so, I think what's really one of the things that, that some of my research shows, is that there's still very much a vibrant women's movement at this time. that's one of the things that I find very exciting. And that's something that even when I was starting to look into this project, I kind of said, you know, we we know a lot about, like, the Weimar era.
the suffragists. Right. even if we think about American history or British history, we see that a lot. We know a lot about the 1970s and how the second wave feminists that come out of that now. And I kept saying there's like this gap. I don't know what happens to women in the 40s and 50s. and what was exciting to me was to see that all these women, who survived the war come out of the woodworks and decide to begin advocating for women's rights.
so one particular figure who probably doesn't get as much attention as she should, but who's really critical here is Elisabeth Selbert. So she's on the West German side. she's a lawyer. She manages to keep practicing law throughout the Nazi regime. So she's, kind of an unusual figure in that regard in that she was able to stay employed.
her husband, however, was fired from his job. He was a political opponent of the Nazis. and she is one of the people that they, call upon. in 1948, 1949 to participate in the constitutional conventions. that they're having in West Germany. And she's actually the one who proposes this phrase, men and women have equal rights.
so she becomes this integral figure, to pushing that forward and to to arguing against opponents. in West Germany or what would become West Germany. in the western zones to make that happen. and she kind of fades into obscurity after that. I think she runs for political office and, and ends up not getting elected or something.
And, but she's such an important figure, and I feel like we should know more about her. On, kind of her counterpart, if you will. On the other side, there's this woman named Hilde Benjamin, and she's a fascinating character. so she joins the Communist Party very early on, like in the 1920s. She gets a law degree.
which at that time, she was one of the first women in Berlin, to get a law degree. she ends up going and working for the Communist Party. During the war, she, she manages to survive. but it's very, very difficult. but then she. After the war, she again rejoins the Communist Party.
she goes to work for, for the regime in East Germany. And, she's kind of a controversial figure. because she, she is a sitting judge on some of the show trials that East Germany had. she has this horrible nickname, Red Hilde or Bloody Hilde because, you know, she was she was, as part of this dictatorship she was persecuting.
political opponents in East Germany. So I don't want to exonerate her in any way because, she's she's actually has this very terrible past, but at the same time that she's doing that, she's also kind of diving back into her past as a women's rights activist and similar to Elizabeth Selbert in the West, she starts rewriting laws.
She starts advocating for equal rights for women. And, she manages to end up becoming Minister of Justice because, on June 17th, 1953, there the infamous uprising in East Germany where, it comes up to, I think somewhere around 1 million or maybe a little more than a million, East German workers, protest, essentially a series, of decrees that are put in place in East Germany.
and they're basically protesting for workers rights as the the most simplistic answer to that. They take to the streets, they go on strike. and this this is an enormous affront to the East German dictatorship. and as it happens, trying to suppress this, the East Germans call upon the Soviets to aid them. They send in tanks, they suppress the uprising.
That's the end of it. but over the next couple of weeks, there are several East German leaders and government ministers, including the Minister of Justice at that time, Max Fechner, who openly, dissent from the East German regime's, decision to suppress those uprisings as violently as they did. because they are violent, they send in tanks, they arrest people.
I mean, it's it's, you know, it's this horrific moment, in East Germany. and it's very much on the global stage. West Germans are like, watching over the at that point, the Berlin Wall is in place, but they're watching over the border. Right? They can see this happening. They see these tanks rolling through. and so because that minister of Justice defense against the regime's decisions, he's gets kicked out of his position, and that creates an opening for her to step into that role.
So they appoint her Minister of Justice. and it's through that capacity that she is able to push through some of these reforms to civil law, and to really open up women's rights, in East Germany in a way that, her, predecessor had not been pursuing. so those are a couple of the figures who who pop up.
there's certainly more, but, those are big ones.
Johanna Bringhurst: I had no idea that a woman was in the, like, the cabinet in East Germany. That's really interesting to hear. I mean, it sounds like she was a controversial character. you also describe how churches were really heavily involved in these policy debates. Can you tell us more about how.
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. so in both East and West Germany, there are several, I guess, what we might think of as interest groups, that play very important roles here in pushing for new laws. on both sides, there are women's associations. there are also trade union representatives. But perhaps what was most shocking to me when I was researching was how involved the churches were.
and, you know, something to keep in mind, at this point in time is that, you know, as we're emerging from World War Two in the late 40s and 50s, it's first of all that many Germans still identify with the confession, whether that's Catholic or Protestant. those, those numbers do, vary a little bit East Germany, just because historically of where Lutheranism was and so forth.
East Germany is much more Protestant. It's like 92% Protestant, with a very small Catholic majority. In West Germany, it's a little I think it's slightly heavier towards Catholic, but it's a little more like, you know, 50, 50, 45, 55 kind of thing. and so those churches and we also have to remember too, is that there's a long tradition of Christian democracy in Germany that even predates, World War Two.
so if we go back to the Weimar Republic, there's a Catholic center party, there's a number of parties that are linked to the Protestant church. What happens after World War Two is, because they recognize that there's divisions, among the parties is they all combine into what's now known as the Christian Democratic Union. which to this day, right, is one of the largest parties, in Germany.
and there there is an East German version of that. But of course, it's kind of suppressed, underneath the East German dictatorship in favor of the Communist Party. so that's all to say that churches at this point in time are, very important, interest groups, they represent a fairly large portion of the population. it doesn't mean that the population is always super devout.
or super zealous, but they nevertheless identify with the church. So this means then that, in both both states, that the churches have kind of an in with the governments in one way or another. Now, in West Germany, the chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, he's a devout Catholic. He's from the CDU. so he is very much having meetings with both Catholic and Protestant leaders to talk about, you know, these legal reforms that are coming.
the paradox of that, though, I would say, is we might expect because of that connection that, that, that these churches would have their way, that they would be able to push through a, you know, a return to this traditional family structure or something that's very much embedded in church teaching. and that ends up not being the case in West Germany.
There's simply too much resistance from society for the churches to have their way. And there's even divisions between Protestants and Catholics that mean that there's not really a unified front. so I was very surprised to find that result, and I was researching it. Now on Easter, many church members are allowed to worship, but they are slowly through, very intentional means within the East German government, being pushed out to the margins.
for example, confirmation ceremonies are replaced by a secular confirmation ceremony worth brigades in the early years would be scheduled on Sunday mornings. Right. So there's ways that the communist regime is finding, to kind of, you know, take away some of the influence of the churches. but they're nevertheless still important players at this point in time.
And the East German regime, the East German government recognizes that these churches still have quite a bit of sway. and there's moments when they sort of bowed to the demands of the church, because they are, you know, they're trying to keep their regime legitimate. They're trying to stay in power. so there is a point when in my research, in the, right around 1954, where they debut a draft of the new civil code of the new civil law.
it's very egalitarian. It's pretty radical. And it's the churches who petition the East German government and say, you know, this, this infringes on our rights. and the most fascinating thing that comes out of that is not so much that they turn this into some sort of, argument about theology or worship or what their rights are as religious group, but rather that they argue, if you pass this law, you will contribute to the further, divide of Germany.
that and that's the part when I was reading the sources that the East German leaders say, well, hold on, that's that's a problem, right? That we don't want to be seen as the ones who are further dividing Germany, but rather we want to, constantly accuse West Germany of doing that. Right? That they're the ones who of who've created the situation.
So that's the moment that gives East German leaders like Hilde Benyamin her pause. And that's a moment where they say, you know what? We're going to shut down these discussions. We're going to shut down these reforms. We're going to return, basically to to the drafting board. and we'll figure things out from there. And the only so they basically, you know, they, they shut down all public discussion of it.
And what allows them then to pass a more radical law in the 1960s, as the construction of the Berlin Wall, once the Berlin Wall goes up, once their citizens can't escape to the West, then they have an opportunity to to pass more radical reform. So in both cases, the churches have this kind of paradoxical effect. you might expect in East Germany, where they were being somewhat suppressed, but they wouldn't have any kind of effect on the regime.
They do. And in West Germany, you would have expected them to have an enormous effect on the regime. And yet the they have a sort of muted effect that we don't really necessarily anticipate in the beginning.
Johanna Bringhurst: I can be really surprised to hear that, too. I guess when I think of East Germany and Communist nations at that time, you don't expect that religious groups would have an impact. I'm really curious to understand more. How does this desire for German reunification impact the debate? I didn't know, I guess that from the very beginning there is this desire by people to at some point, unify again.
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. yeah. So I think that's a that's an interesting question too, because that was certainly something that was always on the table, in the early 1950s. there were discussions about what might happen if Germany reunified at that stage, what would be necessary for it to reunify? under what conditions? of course, at this point, Stalin is still alive, and, there's no way that he's going to give over territory to the West, right.
And vice versa. and I, you know, and I would say after about the mid 1950s, there's any kind of realistic discussion of reunification really begins to go away. East Germany begins to fortify its borders at this point, with the West and as we know, in 1961, they cut off access to West Berlin. but building the Berlin Wall.
so, you know, what we really do see here is, at least for a period of time, right. A true division. And it doesn't mean that there weren't connections between the two or correspondence between the two. but, but we do see that. So as a result, women's rights go on pretty divergent paths in many ways.
you know, in East Germany, there had always been higher numbers of women working full time, in the 1970s. They introduce like a year long maternity leave. they also offer, like, state supported daycare so that women can work. so there's all kinds of benefits that are embedded in East Germany that West German women don't get because they're still expected primarily to stay at home.
even if they do work part time or into care for their families. so it's interesting then, is when we do get German reunification in 1990, is this does end up having an enormous effect on women's rights in some ways. and, and essentially what happens at this point is East Germany is sort of subsumed into the West German model.
So all those rights, there's there's never any discussion of how can we kind of incorporate parts of East Germany. but rather all those rights go away. So the state supported daycare, the maternity leave at this point, all those things that East German women had come to expect. that goes away, practically overnight. on the other side, though, within some spaces such as the women's movement, there we do see some East Germans, East German women, kind of finding new spaces in those movements.
They had never really been allowed to have an independent space like that to discuss their concerns with women in East Germany. they you could join like the East German women's, there's a Democratic League, of women. they could join that. But that's a state sponsored organization, right? It's it's always something that's very much tied to the agenda of the state.
So for some East German women, it's it's liberating in a sense that, issues that were very much kind of pushed under the rug, in East Germany can now be discussed in these, these sort of groups. but, you know, but some of the rights that were granted not by the state went away.
Johanna Bringhurst: I'm so surprised. I have to say, it's really interesting to hear that East German women had maternity leave, had state sponsored childcare. I think that is contrary to what we expect based on how we look at that history. Why is it important, do you think, for us to study women's rights in different places in different time periods?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. well, I mean, I think now we're in 2024 and, women's rights are either under attack or they're just not particularly developed, right, in many countries around the globe in many ways. and for those of us at least, who live in countries like the United States, where our mission, ideally right, is to guarantee equality to each and every citizen, then we have to research.
We have to understand what legal and political and social mechanisms are at play that are making real equality and possible right for everyone. And so I think by studying women's rights in, in different places in times, first of all, it allows us to see our own issues in a new light. as I said, it was very formative for me when I first started learning about this and learning like, oh, they have an equal rights clause we don't like.
You were just saying about East Germany. they had state sponsored childcare. We don't, and, you know, and just being able to evaluate that in a comparative light and to see what effect that has on society, I find that really useful. I think you two can also make us think a lot about, like what? what strategies succeed or fail in the, in the past, to push these movements forward.
and to achieve more equality for women. you know, something that that's very much inform my work is if we look at, like, women's movements in the 70s and 80s, the strategies and the arguments that they were making were very different from the women in the 40s and 50s. and I've even heard kind of those the criticisms from women of that generation saying, well, you know, my mother's generation just didn't do enough.
They should have taken to the streets. They should have done this. They should have protested. but they also, in that sense, are lacking a sense of the context of the time. It was the 1940s, you know, a war had just ended. Women were trying to keep food on the table. Some of them didn't know if their husbands were going to come home.
you know, some of them had children they had to support. they were shouldering a lot. And so when we think about the different context of that time, it's like, well, they did what they could. for some women, that meant writing a petition to their, you know, their parliamentary representative. for some women that meant, you know, joining a women's association that were allowed to reform after 1945.
that doesn't make their work any less legitimate. and it doesn't, it doesn't mean that what they were fighting for, was in any way less legitimate. So, you know, I think it makes us think about why does that succeed at that point in time? what might be other ways to pursue? What other strategies? might be useful?
but the other thing, too, is like, even though we're seeing a lot of differences between different women's movements and their approaches globally, I think it also allows us to see commonalities, in our experiences. And so I think that's that's also very helpful to, and this is something that has, in fact, been a hallmark of the women's movements since the late 19th century.
They were, attending international meetings and saying, you know, what's the situation in Belgium? What's the situation in Germany? Oh, the United States, you know, what do you guys have? and when you read those things, you realize that actually their experiences across borders were very, very similar. so it makes us think, think beyond ourselves in our own context.
Johanna Bringhurst: I think you work and teach young people, on campus at the University of Idaho. And I'm curious, how do your students respond when they're learning this kind of surprising history about women's rights?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. I think they're fascinated by it. absolutely. I just started teaching. Our semester just started. So I just started teaching sex and gender through the ages. And, my course yesterday, students are just, they're just so excited to learn about it because it's so beyond themselves. And, you know, I think one of the interesting things about teaching, European history is it's in some ways contexts that they're less familiar with.
but that also kind of grants a, I think for many students or they're very open minded, about learning something new that they've never really thought much about before. And comparing that to their own experiences. So, I think it's been a very positive experience. Yeah.
Johanna Bringhurst: I'm so glad to hear that. Thank you so much, Doctor Ruble, for being here today. This really is such a surprising chapter in that time and place in history. And obviously it does. It impact how we are looking and talking and thinking about women's rights as we start out 2024?
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Yeah. Well, thank you for the invitation. I really, really enjoyed our conversation.
Johanna Bringhurst: Thank you. We'll have to talk again soon.
Dr. Alexandria Ruble: Absolutely.