Inter-American Commission of Women

The Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM) is an organization that falls within the Organization of American States. It was established in 1928 by the Sixth Pan-American Conference and is composed of one female representative from each Republic in the Union. It was continued in 1933 and in 1938 was made a permanent organization, with the goal of studying and addressing women’s issues in the Americas. It was the first intergovernmental organization designed specifically to address the civil and political needs of women.

It was the first international organization ever to present a resolution for international suffrage for women in 1933. It was the first organization to submit a treaty which was adopted concerning women's rights—the 1933 Convention on the Nationality of Women, which provided that marriage did not affect nationality. The women of the CIM submitted a resolution and attained the first international acknowledgement of women's political and civil rights (1938). They also researched and prepared the first ever resolution on violence against women which was approved as the 1994 Convention of Belém do Pará. These firsts were based upon a strategy that has been followed by the women delegates of the CIM. By attaining international agreements, they are able to pressure change in their home countries to comply with those resolutions.

When it became known that one of the three topics to be discussed at the 1930 meeting of the League of Nations would be the subject of nationality and how that could be codified in international law, Doris Stevens, a well-known feminist from the United States determined that the first priority of feminists should be to study how law effected women's nationality. For example, at the time, upon marrying, a British woman would have lost her British citizenship had she married an Argentine, but as Argentina's law did not confer citizenship upon her for marriage, she became stateless. Stevens worked with Alice Paul of the National Woman's Party of the United States to review and prepare a report evaluating how women were effected by various laws. The women compiled a monumental report, which indexed all laws controlling women's nationality from every country in their native language and then translated each law on an accompanying page.

Stevens spent three months in Europe meeting with women leaders and compiling information. She met with Dr. Luisa Baralt of Havana, Dr. Ellen Gleditsch of Oslo, Chrystal Macmillan and Sybil Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda of the UK, the Marquesa del Ter of Spain, Maria Vérone of France and Hélène Vacaresco of Romania, as well as various officers of the International Federation of University Women and others. She held public meetings to discuss the question of nationality in Geneva, London and Paris and attended a meeting at the Assembly of the League of Nations to obtain approval of a resolution for governments to attend a meeting discussing codification of laws and encouraged them to include women in their delegate selections. The resolution was submitted and passed unanimously. In anticipation of a cooperative meeting between women in Europe and the Americas a conference was held at the Pan American Union to present the topic of women's nationality.

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