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representatives in the Polish parliament were female. 123 And yet, women did begin to play an

increasingly important role in public life through an emerging associational network, which often

featured branches in the eastern borderlands. 124 In doing so, they reflected developments in the work

of rural women’s organizations across Europe. As the author of a document produced for a League of

Nations conference in 1939 argued, “in the villages, even more than in the towns, the cleanliness of

the household and the health of the members of the family is in the hands of the housewife.” 125

The question of how suited women were for work in the borderlands did not receive a

uniform answer from Polish men. Some male political commentators praised the efforts of women in

the kresy, with the Peasant Party leader Wincenty Witos arguing that female teachers actually

outperformed their male counterparts in eastern Poland. 126 Others believed that Volhynia remained

an environment in which both the state and the nation were vulnerable—and that women did not

possess the necessary hardiness to flourish in such conditions. The head of Volhynia’s right-wing

Polish Motherland Schools association was skeptical, insisting that the difficult material and moral

conditions in the east meant that men, rather than women, should fill the posts of schoolteachers in

the toughest areas. 127 If debates about who was best suited to withstand degeneration in the kresy

were not easily resolved, however, the narrative of the civilizing mission certainly allowed non-

traditional political actors—in this case, women—to stake out a new role.

In Volhynia, women tied themselves to the state project without directly challenging either

the traditionally male-dominated world of party-politics and government administration or that of

military settlers and border guards. 128 Instead, they focused almost entirely on addressing domestic

123 Anna Żarnowska, “Women’s Political Participation in Inter-war Poland: Opportunities and Limitations,”
Women’s History Review 13, no. 1 (2004): 58.
124 Adriana Dawid and Joanna Lusek (ed.), Kobiety na Kresach na przełomie XIX i XX wieku (Warsaw, 2016).
125 League of Nations European Conference on Rural Life: General Survey of Medico-Social Policy in Rural Areas,
No. 13 (Geneva, 1939), 42.
126 Witos, Moje wspomnienia.
127 Krzyżanowski, “Zagadnienia kulturalno-oświatowe,” 158.
128 The limits on women’s roles in political life and their new opportunities are explored in Anna Żarnowska and
Andrzej Szwarz (eds.), Równe prawa i nierówne szanse (Warsaw, 2000).

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