The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women

Abstract

SummaryThis article analyses the debate on trafficking and policies to combat the recruitment of persons for commercial sex within the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children of the League of Nations. Its main argument is that the Committee's governmental and non-governmental representatives engaged in what might be called a “moral recruitment of women”. This form of recruitment had a double purpose: to protect females from prostitution through the provision of “good employment”, and to repress intermediaries of prostitution by means of criminalization. Three elements of the Committee's internal debates and concrete actions will receive special attention. Firstly, the ideological framework (feminism, social purity, humanitarianism, abolitionism, regulationism, and/or class); secondly, the gender dynamics (differences of opinion between the Committee's male and female representatives); and thirdly the degree of gendering (construction or reinforcement of gender roles and relations).

Morality Politics and Prostitution Policy in Brussels: A Diachronic Comparison

“…The sophisticated methodology used by the League of Nations in the 1920s to "prove" the existence of "a traffic of considerable dimensions" (League of Nations, 6 1927, p. 43) conflated prostitution with organized crime. The campaigns that were launched gave force and symbolic value to all of the private institutions and state actors that sought to repress trafficking and commercial sex (Chaumont, 2009;Rodríguez García, 2012).…”

“…Public criticism of the regulation system, however, was widespread. The white slavery scandal of the late 1800s, the re-introduction of strict laws on prostitution during and immediately after the First World War, and the impetus generated by the abolitionist agenda of the League of Nations strengthened the Belgian anti-regulation lobby (Rodríguez García, 2012). A proposal was made to suspend the existing laws for a period of six months, and it was approved by forty-one of the forty-two councilors of the City of Brussels in 1924.…”

La Sociedad de Naciones en su centenario: un campo historiográfico en expansión

“…Sobre el régimen para los refugiados Hathaway (1984); Skran (1995); Barnet (2002); Kevonian (2003), y Burguess (2016). Sobre los refugiados armenios y la SN véase Kevonian (2004); Gzoyan (2014); Shemmassian (2003), y sobre todo los trabajos de Watenpaugh (2010de Watenpaugh ( , 2015ade Watenpaugh ( , 2015b; sobre el tráfico de mujeres Knepper (2013,2016) y los capítulos específicos sobre la cuestión en Knepper (2011); también Kozma (2017); Chaumont y Rodríguez García (2017); Legg (2012); Leppänen (2007); Limoncelli (2010), y Rodríguez García (2012); sobre la Organización de Salud véase (entre otros muchos) los trabajos incluidos en Weindling (1995); y también Borowy (2009); Akami (2017), y Balińska (1995). 31 Pedersen (2007): 1096.…”

Sex Trafficking of Women. Civil Society Activism Against Sexual Slavery Between the 19th and the Early 20th Century

“…Although the agreements included the aim of helping victims and protecting vulnerable groups such as immigrants, the actions were mainly focused on controlling migratory flows and female immigration (Lammasniemi, 2017). Despite there were different ideologies among the anti-trafficking movement, first national and international policies considered trafficking and prostitution as heinous crimes and social evils, they addressed this concern from a social purity crusade rather than a human rights perspective (Rodríguez García, 2012). In any case, these agreements encouraged countries to generate public policies and instruments in line with international conventions and agreements, in an attempt to extend political initiatives to combat human trafficking globally.…”