L'Alliance Internationale Jeanne d'Arc, St Joan's International Alliance

Included in this document is a short history of St. Joan's International Alliance, a Catholic feminist group formed in 1911. The author also examines the Alliance's goals and needs in the contemporary period. At the turn of the last century, the question of women's social and political subordination appeared particularly intractable in Catholicism since gendered social roles were inscribed in religious doctrine. Feminism and Catholicism, according to the author, seemed to be mutually exclusive systems of belief until 1911 and the formation of the Catholic Women's Suffrage Society in London. By the 1920s, the organization grew transnational in scope, came to be named after Joan of Arc, and defined its goals as promoting free professional choice for women and men and the erasure of gendered stereotypes. By the 1930s, the organization was active in assessing and ameliorating the condition of colonized women and women of the "third world," as well as taking an interest in prostitution and the so-called White Slave Trade. In the mid-twentieth century, the Alliance was recognized by the United Nations and it continued to grow in prestige and influence in the decades which followed -- in part by committing to social action and in part by pushing Catholic leaders to recognize its feminist agenda. Writing in 1992, but drawing on an earlier history written in 1977, the author explains that the organization's goals nearly eighty years after its inception are to promote a dialogue with the Vatican on women's ordination as priests, to continue its work with "third world" women, and to encourage worldwide a feminist-minded platform of social justice.