The Women's Peace Train has traditionally been used by women's groups as a means of protesting war, militarization, and the impact of violence on women and children. The idea of what peace means has evolved over decades of protest. Initially ending or preventing war was the primary goal of these protests, but in the nuclear era, it became evident that weapons had the power to devastate environments and populations leading to expansion of concerns. Ethnic and racial tensions, as well as disruption of sustainable development goals have also been addressed in peace train actions. There have been numerous women's peace trains on almost every continent since the early 20th century.
Background Women's Peace Train emerged in the twentieth century as a term to figuratively describe women onboard with the international peace movement, or literally to portray women who physically traversed from different places by rail or convoy in support of peace. At the start of World War I, in 1915 women from throughout Europe traveled by train to attend the founding congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at The Hague, Netherlands. At the end of the conference two delegations of women were appointed to encourage the heads of states of warring nations to come together and solve their disputes diplomatically. Emily Greene Balch, Chrystal Macmillan, Cornelia Ramondt-Hirschmann, and Rosika Schwimmer visited neutral countries and Jane Addams, Alice Hamilton, Aletta Jacobs, and Mien van Wulfften Palthe traveled to warring nations, with the goal of persuading heads of state to form a neutral mediating body for solving international disputes. In the midst of war, the delegates traveled by train, criss-crossing Europe, and meeting with heads of state over the next several months. The women successfully obtained agreement from reluctant foreign ministers to participate in, or at least not to oppose, the creation of a mediation organization. As US President Woodrow Wilson was not ready to initiate a mediating body while the war continued and his re-election had been decided, the League of Nations was not created until 1920, after the war was over.
During the Cold War period, trips were organized primarily to oppose nuclear testing and the spread of nuclear acquisition, as well as to promote universal disarmament, and end hostilities from the superpowers and their allies through international cooperation. By the mid-1980s, women had begun to use peace train campaigns to link militarism with violence against women, and sought to prevent destruction of the environment from nuclear warfare and the spread of power plants. By the 1990s, women's peace trains were being organized to protest racism and ethnic conflicts and tension and by the 2000s to raise awareness that conflict and violence against women and children prevented countries from reaching sustainable development goals. Passage of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 acknowledged the disproportionate impact of armed conflict on women and children, calling for member nations to adopt gender perspectives in policies and programs which dealt with conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Since its passage in 2000, there has been recognition that peace and security depend on development policies and programs which include protections and equal opportunities for women and children, concerns which have been incorporated into women's peace train actions.
New York City to Washington, D.C., USA (1962) On 15 January 1962, around 1,800 peace activists organized by Ruth Chenven and members of Women Strike for Peace boarded a train at Pennsylvania Station in New York City. The activists, mainly from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York were traveling to Washington, D.C. to meet up with activists from twenty other states and protest nuclear testing and demand universal disarmament. Newspapers reported that it was the longest train to ever leave the station, and that the delegation was so large it needed two trains, but still over 200 women had to stand on the journey. Among the participants were Ruth Gage-Colby, Valerie Delacorte, and Hedwig Hass Turkenkopf, a former mayor of Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The train made stops to pick up more women in Trenton, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. Upon arriving in Washington, they took thirty chartered buses to the White House, where they planned to meet with President John F. Kennedy and congressional leaders. The president did not meet with them, but the activists met with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Congressmen Edwin B. Dooley and Robert R. Barry, both of New York. Despite heavy rains, they also picketed the embassies of Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union before leaving Washington. In December 1962, some of the participants in the peace train were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, as suspected communists. The women either denied affiliation with communists or invoked their right to refuse testifying under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Montreal to Ottawa, Canada (1962) In 1960, journalist Lotta Dempsey called for Canadian women to actively oppose nuclear war and involve themselves in peace initiatives. In answer to her call, the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW) was formed. Thérèse Casgrain became president of the organization in 1962 and led the campaign to try to persuade Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and his government to forgo acquiring nuclear weapons. Casgrain chartered a train for 300 to 400 activists, their children, and a few male supporters to travel from Montreal to Ottawa to urge the government to work towards ending the arms race and Cold War militarization. The women who participated included VOW members and French, Jewish, and Slavic representatives of other women's organizations. The passengers boarded the train on 7 March 1962, at Windsor station, stopped at Westmount station, and then traveled west to Ottawa returning the same day. After arriving in Ottawa, the women were met by a busload of women from Ontario and marched to Parliament Hill carrying a laundry basket full of telegrams from throughout Canada supporting VOW's anti-war stance. They were met by an English-speaking Member of Parliament, and demanded that a French-speaker be sent. The women were surveilled by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which created dossiers on the activists fearing that they were communist sympathizers, which VOW women denied.
On 22 October 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis came to a head, US President Kennedy broadcast on television the news that the Soviet Union was building missile sites in Cuba and demanded that they be dismantled. Diefenbaker refused to call for the Canadian Armed Forces to be mobilized to support the US, but the crisis spurred cabinet talks about whether Canada should acquire nuclear weapons. In a complicated plan,Howard Charles Green, the Minister of External Affairs proposed that nuclear weapons should not be stored on Canadian soil, but that they should be acquired and stored in the US, where they would be held until needed for an emergency. Douglas Harkness, the Minister of National Defence, argued against the plan because in his view, in light of the crisis, Canadians wanted security. Casgrain and Solange Chaput-Rolland led a second trip on 1 November, picking up activists at Windsor, Westmount, Montréal-Ouest, Dorval, Pointe Claire, and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue stations, before arriving at Union Station in Toronto. Once in Ottawa, they silently marched to the House of Commons and met with Green. Their message was to again urge the government to work to end the arms race, ban nuclear testing, and support international cooperation. The activists were ineffective as public sentiment had shifted to support for maintaining a nuclear arsenal and coordinating it through international diplomacy. Harkness resigned on 3 February 1963 out of frustration with the failure to resolve the nuclear question. Two days later a no confidence vote caused the formal dissolution of Parliament. Diefenbaker's inaction on the nuclear weapons question was a major reason for the defeat of his party in the following election.
Stockholm, Sweden to Smolensk, Russia (1982) In July 1982, Scandinavian women, taking part in Peace March '82 boarded a peace train traveling from Stockholm, Sweden to Leningrad, in the Soviet Union. Around 300 women from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden rode the train to attend planned rallies in Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Kalinin, and Smolensk to protest the arms race. The activists, who were part of Women for Peace from Scandinavia were sponsored by the European Nuclear Disarmament organization and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that the protesters would be the first Western peace demonstrators to be officially welcomed and permitted to tour the Soviet Union. The signs and slogans which appeared on their protest banners were subject to Soviet approval. The approved messages called for actions by all Cold War adversaries to work for peace, supporting neither NATO nor Warsaw Pact allies. Eva Nordland, a Norwegian who was one of the organizers of the trip, reiterated that the focus was not on geopolitical divisions, but rather to raise awareness that backing the use of nuclear weapons was supporting human extinction. The slogans included "No to nuclear weapons in Europe, East and West!", "No to nuclear weapons in the world!", "Yes to disarmament and peace!" The women began their march on Kirov Street in central Leningrad and traversed some 3,000 miles, calling for an end to nuclear proliferation and international cooperation. In actuality, the protesters did little demonstrating, as the Soviet-organized event had the women spending time traveling long distances by train and attending a series of sight-seeing tours. Contact with Soviet citizens was limited, as the women's activities were carefully orchestrated and controlled. Despite the restrictions, Danielle Grünberg, national coordinator of the British Women's Peace Alliance; Cees van der Vel, a Dutch journalist; and Jean Stead, a reporter for The Guardian, met with members of the Group to Establish Trust between the USSR and the USA, including Olga Lvovna Medvedkova and her husband . The "Trust-Builders", as the group members called themselves, were independent of the government and advocated for "détente from below", meaning that peace would more likely be achieved by an informed mass movement, rather than government action.
After the Scandinavian women left, the Soviet government announced through TASS that the peace march was on-going for its fifteenth day. The Soviet Peace Committee, according to author and diplomat Clive Rose, attempted to "exploit" the Scandinavian women's protest and tie it to one of their own. They organized a train voyage from Moscow, which passed through Kyiv, Budapest, and Bratislava, on its way to Vienna. Participants took part in demonstrations at each stop. Arriving in Vienna, they joined with a group of peace activists from Berlin and Balkan protestors who had participated in a march from Greece and Romania. In Vienna, the protestors took part in an anti-US—anti-NATO rally, which focused on change of Western policies, to counter a perceived Anti-Soviet—Anti-Socialist theme in peace movements. Even with the limitations and mixed-outcomes, Grünberg deemed the action successful because it confirmed women's leading role in the movement for peace and disarmament.
Brisbane to Fremantle, Australia (1984)