ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to fill in the blanks in the story of building a Franco-American women’s network in the late nineteenth century. It will reveal the deliberate use by feminists from both sides of the Atlantic of the international (or universal) expositions of Paris in 1889, the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 as venues to promote the formation of an International Council of Women (ICW) and, ultimately, to foster an affiliated French national council. Biography and personal contacts played a huge role in the building of this network. The key American player in this effort was May Wright Sewall, a close collaborator with leaders of the American suffrage movement, who encouraged her French contacts to send displays on the status of women in 1893 and who kept after them to form a national council. Key French participants included Isabelle Bogelot, Maria Martin and Marie-Joséphine Pégard. The collaboration continued through the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, when French women initiated two separate congresses, both of which endorsed the council project. Sewall, now the president (1899–1904) of the ICW, spent that summer in Paris cheerleading the ultimately successful launch of the Conseil national des femmes françaises (in April 1901) and its subsequent affiliation to the international council.
