‘the only black-out is the black-out in my soul’
British women’s poetry of the Second World War by Anne Powell … experiences connected with the blitz, the shopping queues, the home front, deserted wives, deceived husbands, broken homes, dull jobs, bad More »
Women’s History Walk around Radical Manchester
By Michael Herbert. Manchester was the world’s first great industrial city—‘Cottonopolis’—its privilege and poverty both dazzled and appalled by turn. It played a significant role in the formation of radical movements that More »
Women and Madness
By Claire Jones. The association of madness with 19C femininity has generated much research by historians of women’s history. Although this association can be traced back to medieval times, to woman mystics More »
Sylvia Pankhurst: Activist with Attitude
As a little girl growing up in Woodford Green, on the fringe of Epping Forest, just before World War Two, I was warned by my very conventional Conservative parents to walk on More »
What is women’s history?
History is all too often exactly that - His Story. Typically the narratives told are the stories of men, with major events interpreted according to their impact on the masculine sex, to More »
Lily Montagu, Religious Reformer and Social Worker
By Rabbi Lawrence Rigal Today both Liberal and Reform movements now have women Rabbis and they use new prayer books written in inclusive language, where God is no longer referred to in male terms. All of this directly followed on
Eglantyne Jebb, 1876-1928, Founder of Save the Children and champion of children’s rights
By her biographer, Clare Mulley Eglantyne Jebb, an unlikely children’s champion? ‘To succeed in life, you must give life’ Eglantyne Jebb once wrote. But she herself did not give life in the traditional way expected of a well-to-do Edwardian lady
Women and femininity in the history of science
By Claire Jones Women have always participated in scientific endeavour, even before the term ‘scientist’ was invented. (The term ‘scientist’ is usually attributed to William Whewell, Cambridge academic, who used it in its modern sense in 1841, but some scholars
Bathsua Makin, c 1608-1675
Scholar, writer, educator and early feminist Overview Bathsua Makin was one of a group of women, including Christine de Pizan, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell, who can be described as ‘early feminists’ (although the term ‘feminist’ only came into use
Women in the 1920s
by Pamela Horn, (Stroud: Amberley, 2010), (Paperback) £16.00, ISBN 978-1-84868-811-7 Reviewed by Fiona Skillen Pamela Horn provides an informative and detailed account of life for women during the 1920s in Britain. She works her way carefully through different aspects of
Zabillet - the mother of Joan of Arc
By Joy Bounds Introduction The story of Joan of Arc (Jehanne) is well known. A young, fifteenth-century peasant girl, she led the French army successfully against the English occupiers, and was later captured and burnt at the stake at the
The trouble with Women Pirates…
Jo Stanley reflects on image, reality and the process of writing ‘outsider’ history What could be sassier, you might think, than a bold, sexy buccaneer? Slightly dykey and into a light-hearted touch of woman-led bondage. Brandishing—but with a beautiful smile—a
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, c 1623-1674
Playwright; poet; natural philosopher. It was famously said of Margaret Cavendish that she was different to the rest ‘of her frail sex’ who, unlike her, ‘have Fruitful Wombs but Barren Brains’. Gender in the seventeenth century The task of reconstructing
Women’s access to higher education: An overview (1860-1948)
Women’s struggle for higher education did not begin in the mid-late nineteenth century. There had been calls for women to receive educational opportunities equivalent to their brothers well before, including pleas from notable women including Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Mary Astell
Christine de Pizan and the ‘Querelle des femmes’
Christine de Pizan’s choices and achievements were highly unusual for a woman in the male dominated culture of the Middle Ages. At a time when unflattering opinions about women were widely spread by writers, the church and followers of the
