A transnational conference romance: Elsie Andrews, Hildegarde Kneeland, and the Pan-Pacific Women's Association

Elsie Andrews, a feminist activist from New Zealand, met Dr. Hildegarde Kneeland, a progressive economist from the United States, at the 1934 Pan-Pacific Women's Association conference in Honolulu. Andrews wrote diaries of her attendance at conferences, and in these writes openly of her attraction and romantic feelings for Kneeland, despite her own long-term domestic partnership back in New Plymouth with Muriel Kirton. This article considers the role conference romances may have played for Andrews and others in encouraging their interest in women's organizations, in the context of literature on romantic friendships and lesbianism.