League of Nations Secretariat, Duplicating Service

League of Nations Secretariat, Duplicating Service

The League of Nations employed a permanent Secretariat, based in Geneva, to fulfil the various functions of a transnational bureaucracy. The League’s many conferences and assemblies would not have been possible without departments like the Duplicating Service. The League of Nations Covenant had decreed, under pressure from feminist associations, that the Secretariat ‘be open equally to men and women’. While by 1925 women represented half of the League’s employees, they were dramatically overrepresented in behind-the-scenes roles like these.

United Nations Archives at Geneva