St Joan's International Alliance Catholic Women's Suffrage Society

The Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, predecessor of the St Joan's International Alliance was founded in 1911 by Gabrielle Jeffery and May Kendall. Their aim was to create an organisation which was non-party political and which would encourage support for women's suffrage within the Catholic Church. An inaugural meeting was organised in Kensington Town Hall in July of that year and attracted participants who became the core of its 200 members under the leadership of Kathleen Fitzgerald as chairperson and Jeffery as secretary. Men were encouraged to join but could not hold posts in the group and branches were established in Liverpool, Brighton and Hastings by the end of the following year, with others to follow in Bristol and Edinburgh. In 1912, the society affiliated to the Federated Council of Suffrage Societies. From 1914, the CWSS published the newspaper the Catholic Suffragist, renamed the Catholic Citizen from early 1918, which continues to be published today. After the granting of limited franchise to women in Britain in 1918, a development that was mirrored in a large number of countries across the world, the society refocused its aims on a wider scale to consider social issues affecting women. This prompted a change of name to reflect this: it became the St Joan's Social and Political Alliance in 1923. From this time on, its international work expanded, from becoming a founder member of the liaison committee of international female organisations in 1924 to the presentation of a report to the League of Nations on the subject of female status in African and Asian states in 1937. This international work continued after the Second World War. Its areas of interest now included the slave trade, women's education and professional development, employment, divorce, prostitution and marital abuse, advising the United Nations on these matters and becoming recognised as an official consultative body by the UN, UNESCO and the World Labour Organisation since 1952. The group which continued in the United Kingdom became known as the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Section of the St Joan's International Alliance in 1954 and was active in the international body's efforts to support the introduction of women priests since the Vatican Council of 1961. However, it has declined to become a 'Catholic' organisation and remained an 'organisation of Catholics' from that time in order to maintain its independence of opinion.