A postwar taboo?: racism and the West German women's movement, 1975–1980

2025/12/10 by Davies, Hannah Catherine
#900 History

paper · doi:10.5167/uzh-280972

Abstract

A postwar taboo? Racism and the West German women’s movement, 1975–1980Racism, it has been argued, was often either not seen or misdiagnosed in West Germany, a blind spot that was a result of Germans’ mistaken belief that the legacies of theNazi past had been overcome. This article, using the West German women’s movement as a case study, challenges this view, offering an alternative explanation forGermany’s peculiar discourse on racism. By comparing the movement’s discourse andpractice with that of the French Women’s Liberation Movement in the second half ofthe 1970s, it is argued that the process of decolonization, the legacy of empire, and theresulting differences in postwar migration offer a more convincing explanation thanany shortcomings of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

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