‘I'll never go back to women's work again!’

This article is based upon a Norwegian research project on women who during the 1970s entered jobs traditionally reserved for men in industry. It discusses the integration of women in male-dominated environments. Further it describes the main features of the living of women and the backgrounds of the women involved: Men's jobs for women were rationed out to a chosen few after a careful selection based on specific criteria. In some firms and environments women had great difficulties in integrating, they came up against the written and unwritten rules and norms of ‘the male community’. And the men developed exclusion strategies: sulking and grumbling, isolating, not helping, to help the women too much, to make the practical daily life difficult for them, and systematic pestering and haranguing. The women had to handle the situation by themselves and they chose different survival strategies: pleasing everyone, be a good worker, the militant line, the low profile, the sexuale attraction strategy, the family ‘roles’, i.e. as sisters and mother, or to isolate themselves.     

Caged tigers: ‘First wave’ feminists in India

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War, Indian women began to voice their grievances, form organizations for women only and formulate a women's rights ideology. Between the time when the three major all-India organizations were formed, 1917–1927, and Independence in 1947, women worked for female education and for legislation that would free women from traditional restrictions. This article examines their treatment of three issues: child marriage, purdah and the Hindu Code. The Conclusion evaluates the feminist ideology, the relationship between this ideology and nationalism, and the impact of this movement.     

‘Peace with the earth:’ Women and the environmental movement in Sweden

Women active in the contemporary Swedish environmental movement draw much of their inspiration from twentieth century feminist Elin Wägner (1882–1949) who in the 1930s saw connections between environmental issues, feminism, and matriarchal cultures of the past. Contemporary women writers, poets, and artists celebrate periods in which both women and nature seemed to be more powerful than they are today. Contemporary women are most active in environmental issues that involve the reproduction of the human species (such as nuclear issues) and their own reproductive labor as it affects themselves, the family, and the state (such as pesticides, food quality and distribution, and work environments). These issues are analysed as a ‘politics of reproduction’ that leads to conflicting strategies of equality politics, women's culture politics, and alternative ‘green’ politics. These conflicting strategies exemplify contradictions inherent in both the wider women's movement and the ‘women and environment’ movements throughout the world today.     

Ideology and feminism: Why the suffragettes were ‘wild women’

Opposition to women's suffrage from the 1860s to 1914 was structural and ideological. The dominant ideology concerning women's position was articulated more clearly as the feminist movement mobilized. Ideological opposition to feminism in general and the women's suffrage movement in particular operated on the basis of ideas of ‘natural’ womanhood against which feminist activity was frequently viewed as deviance. Female suffrage speakers were caricatured as ‘unwomanly’, and subjected to a subtle process of ‘role stripping’. Militant activity by the suffragette movement after 1905 invoked a wider range of social control agents, but the particular ideological opposition to feminism continued to be important.     

‘Magdalens and moral imbeciles’: Women's homes in nineteenth-century New Zealand

The potential for women's charitable work in nineteenth-century New Zealand was restricted by colonial women's initial isolation from each other and involvement in domestic life, and also by early government assumption of responsibility for welfare. Rescue work provided one of the few outlets for women's voluntary charity, and reflected the sanction given to women's role as a moral, civilising force in colonial society. It illustrates women's role in the development of social work, the limitations of this role in nineteenth-century New Zealand, and modifications to it in the space of three decades. The arguments used to justify women's involvement in rescuing ‘fallen’ members of their own sex were similar to those used in the later nineteenth-century, when women activists sought wider involvement in public life. It is argued that a power based upon moral influence was narrow in scope and ultimately restrictive in the New Zealand context.     

‘Women want it’: In-vitro fertilization and women's motivations for participation

This paper is a partial summary of work undertaken as part of a degree in Sociology in 1984 at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.My research centred on two areas: the experience of women participating in an IVF program, and the use of that data to argue against a prevalent theme in discussions related to technology—that technology is neutral.The analysis of women's motivations for participation in an IVF program reveals that in order for IVF to be developed and implemented certain prerequisites are necessary. They include (a) adherence to the dominant ideology of motherhood; (b) the discourse on fertility, and (c) the dynamics of male medical science. I argue that IVF mirrors power relations between males and females as groups, and as such already its design reflects specific assumptions.     

‘Free from all uninvited touch of man’: Women's campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914

The history of sex in the last 100 years has generally been represented as a triumphant march from Victorian prudery into the light of sexual freedom. From a feminist perspective the picture is different. During the last wave of feminism women, often represented as prudes and puritans by historians, waged a massive campaign to transform male sexual behaviour in the interests of women. They campaigned against the abuse of women in prostitution, the sexual abuse of children, and marital rape. This article describes the women's activities in the social purity movement, and the increasingly militant stance taken by some pre-war feminists who refused to relate sexually to men, in the context of the developing feminist analysis of sexuality. The main purpose of the paper is to show that in order to understand the significance of this aspect of the women's movement we must look at the area of sexuality not merely as a sphere of personal fulfilment but as an arena of struggle in which male dominance and women's subordination can be most powerfully reinforced and maintained or fundamentally challenged.     

‘First wave’ feminism in nineteenth-century France: Class, family and religion

The history of ‘first wave’ feminism in France raises several questions of relevance to the contemporary women's movement. Organized French feminism began during the struggle to replace a Catholic monarchy with a rationalistic, republican form of government. Because of the allegiance of most Frenchwomen to the church, however, even the republican and socialist supporters of feminist reform in educational institutions and in civil rights opposed political participation by women. Feminists, who themselves emphasized reforms in family law and economic opportunities, formed numerous organizations, published journals and held national and international meetings, but remained less a movement than a mosaic of leaders and groups divided by class, religion and personal rivalry. More importantly, they were estranged from the majority of Frenchwomen by questions pertaining to the relationship of women to the traditional patriarchal family, which continued to play a dominant role in the religious, economic and social life of the country. Internal conflict developed over protective legislation and women's ‘right to work’, while external opposition centered about the politically reactionary potential of religious women, and the alleged ‘anti-patriotic’ individualism of those who rejected motherhood as the ‘natural vocation’ and only career of women. By pitting feminism against a particular form of the family, antifeminists obscured the reality of women's oppression and succeeded in alienating the potential support for feminism of most Frenchwomen.     

‘First wave’ feminism in Canada: The ideas of the English-Canadian suffragists, 1877–1918

Part of the purpose of this paper is to show that a consensus now exists among historians of the movement about the limitations of the suffragists' programme. Studies of the American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand movements concur that the suffragists wished to preserve the family and did not challenge the priority of woman's maternal function.This paper takes a closer look at the evolution of the historical debate in an attempt to establish what is accepted and what remains open to conjecture. At the same time it tries to explain why the suffragists adopted a moderate social platform by borrowing and expanding upon themes raised by other historians. The major contention is that it is possible to explain the suffragists' attitudes without either condemning or lauding them.     

Selfless androgyny: Gregory Rose as ‘virile woman’ in Olive Schreiner's the story of an African farm

While Lyndall, the feminist heroine of Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, articulates and enacts a critique of the position of women in male-dominated society, Gregory Rose's transformation from a vain and self-centred man into a nurturing female nurse is an important part of Schreiner's feminist vision. His womanhood both complements and critiques Lyndall's ‘virility,’ allowing Schreiner to present a fictional version of her theoretical ideal of selfless androgyny.     

Why the revolution doesn't solve everything: What we can learn from the economics of ‘real’ socialism

In this paper I shall review some of the theoretical obstacles which the classical Marxist analysis of women's subordination placed in the path of the socialist movement when it attempted to solve the question of women's inequality in practice. I will also show how the particular path of socialist construction that the Eastern European countries chose helped to perpetuate the traditional division of roles between men and women and to create a chain reaction which appears to be impervious to the demands of ideology.