The article presents the process that led to the creation of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) in 1920 in London. The main reason for creating a separate international women’s organization within the Zionist movement was the lack of support for women’s ideas in the male-dominated structures. The trigger for the establishment of a separate women’s group after World War I was a trip to Palestine by three middle-class British Jewish women, the wives of high-ranking clerks in the British Mandate for Palestine. However, the creation of WIZO at that particular time was an outcome of several political and cultural phenomena: the beginnings of emancipation of Jewish women in Eastern Europe during the Haskalah, processes of emancipation of Jews in Western Europe, the development of modern nationalisms and anti-Semitism, and the international recognition of the Zionist movement. These conditions led to the creation of Jewish women’s networks, which were the pre-existing condition for the creation of WIZO.
