Alarums and Excursions: Infiltrating at the Palace of Versailles

How is it that the Treaty of Versailles, made by men representing the victorious countries of the First World War, carries a commitment to women’s equal pay? In 1919, women’s organisations wanted to hold major peace talks in Paris, too. They ought rightly to have been there as heads of state, prime ministers and premiers, legal advisors and ministerial staffers. Patriarchal prejudice infused into law and custom kept them out. Whether deliberately or by ignorance, cultural diktat meant women were not at the conference table negotiating with heads of state. But women wanted their voices heard in parallel with government voices. They wanted their perspectives and decisions on matters of state to matter. Understanding, as men did not, that peace could not be achieved if ‘peace talks’ precluded Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire, the ‘central powers’ beaten by the allies, women from these nations were included. This meant all were banned from Paris, forced to find a conference headquarters elsewhere. The women met in Zurich, Switzerland ‘enemies’ and ‘allies’ as one. Yet—back to Versailles and equal pay. Powerful men most assuredly would not have thought once—or at all, ever—about incorporating this principle when consecrating the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Women must have been there to invoke women’s industrial rights. ‘Infiltrating at the Palace of Versailles’ has women qualified in arts and law, yet ruled out from entering the professions by a jurisprudence that said women were not ‘persons’. Undaunted, they infiltrated, having themselves taken on as secretaries par excellence by civil service bureaucrats, who relied on the women to do the work behind the scenes. Yet the women, in their behind-the-scenes working, were ready to take centre-stage. Their aim getting equal pay on the table—and into the Treaty of Versailles. And so—it happened. Fantasy? Fiction? Well, how else did it happen? You be the judge.