Women Strike for Peace
Women Strike for Peace (
WSP, also known as
Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the
United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the
Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's
peace protest during the 20th century. Another group action was led by
Dagmar Wilson, with about 1,500 women gathering at the foot of the
Washington Monument while
President John F. Kennedy watched from the
White House. The protest helped "push the United States and the
Soviet Union into signing a
nuclear test-ban treaty two years later". Reflecting the era in which the group's leaders had been raised, between the
First-wave feminism and the
Second-wave feminism movements, their actions and pleas leaned towards female self-sacrifice rather than towards their own self-interests. However, they pushed the power of a concerned mother to the forefront of American politics, transforming the mother from a "passive victim of war to active fighter for peace".
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