‘Sable venus’, ‘she devil’ or ‘drudge’? British slavery and the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities,c. 1650–1838

Abstract

In this article, the author addresses the problem of how much historians can understand about the identities of individuals living in a different epoch in time, in relation to what has been termed the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities in slavery and freedom. A central argument is that stereotypes of black women were highly gendered and clustered around contradictory representations, particularly the ‘Sable Venus’, ‘She Devil’ and passive ‘drudge’. Thus, the persistence of an African-centred ‘woman's culture’ and strategies of resistance, collaboration and survival are vital to understanding black women's self-defined (as opposed to white attributed) identities. The first section examines the relationship between gender, race and culture in the mediation of African and slave women's identities. This is followed by a critical deconstruction of the ‘Sable Venus’ and interrelated black and white gendered identities in colonial slave society. The final section analyses the importance of the ‘She Devil’ in representing the resistant slave woman who defied the ‘fabulous fiction’ of white stereotyping of black women. A wide time span is adopted in order to analyse how black women's relationship to the gendered power structures underpinning colonial slavery shifted over time, as did ‘white visions’ of their identities. Unifying themes are the central location black women had in the development of colonial relations between black and white and the implications of contact at the harsh interface of African and European cultures for black women's gendered identities.     

Women,Wives and the Campaign Against Pit Closures in County Durham: Understanding the Vane Tempest Vigil

The majority of the women who campaigned to save the Vane Tempest Colliery from closure in 1993 were involved because of their political understanding and allegiances rather than as a consequence of their practical involvement in mining life. Even those women who were married to miners did not conform to the stereotypical conception of ‘miner's wife’. However, the supporting labour movement and the media persisted in conceptualizing the Women's Vigil through romantic and masculinist discourses of miners and mining communities which could only locate the women as ‘wives’, which confined the campaign within historical stereotypes no longer appropriate to the actual situation and which persistently set the idea of socialism against that of feminism. This not only situated the women's campaign as secondary and subject to that of the NUM but it also subverted the possibilities of the women fully articulating their own experience and understanding within the campaign. The situation was further complicated by memories of the miners' strike of 1984-5 in which women played such an important role. One aspect of this role, that of maintaining mining families in the face of hardship, continued to inform understanding of the women's role in the fight to prevent closure, although it was no longer appropriate.The Women's Vigil engaged with a much wider set of concerns and with a wider range of individuals and groups than did that of the miners themselves. There were serious possibilities for broadening the political campaign around the women's slogan of ‘Jobs, community and environment’ which were never fully exploited because of the difficulties of admitting that women could inhabit any position other than that of ‘miners’ wives'.This experience of the Vane Tempest Vigil indicates the significance and the centrality of gender issues within class based political action.     

the <Emphasis Type="Italic">conditions</Emphasis> of politics: low-caste women's political agency in contemporary north Indian society

In this article I analyse the structural and cultural conditions of low-caste women's political agency in urban north India. Whereas in Western feminist political theory, the sexual division of labour is considered to be a key constraint for women's political participation, I show how this has a secondary relevance in the context analysed. I argue that issues concerning the division of labour are intertwined with and subject to those of male consent and support for women's activities. I illustrate how it is often the supposedly ‘oppressive’ household boundaries rather than alternative outer spaces that, under a series of enabling circumstances, initiate women's political activities. Against this backdrop, I show how Indian women activists’ political agency is shaped by men's role, and how agency's relational nature is embedded in women's lifecycles, everyday practices and cultural expectations; in essence, in overall gendered agency. Comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models of political participation and discourse have only just begun. In this respect, I contribute to this nascent field in the following directions: not only do the arguments I present in this article challenge the individualistic Western subject of political action, but they also complicate the idea of the resulting empowerment as a culturally constructed process whose understanding arises from the dialectics between insider and outsider values.     

Gendered endeavours: women and the reshaping of business culture

Traditional approaches to business history have assumed masculine norms. As such, women have either been ignored or treated as marginal. Though women's and gendered history have changed the face and interpretations of most branches of historical research, business historians reacted slowly. The recent refocusing of the business ‘malestream’ is still in its infancy, but its potential to make profitable contributions is far reaching. To date American historians have done much of the refocusing, but Europeans are now involved in incorporating female endeavours. In examining the reshaping of male business cultures this article considers both the deconstruction of the ‘master’ narrative and the alternatives offered by gendered business histories     

Public history and popular memory: issues in the commemoration of the British militant suffrage campaign

Drawing on Raphael Samuel's work on the construction of historical knowledge, this article argues that British militant suffrage feminists had a strong sense of their role in history. Once the vote was won, militants became the first public historians of their own suffrage history by collecting ‘relics’ of the campaign and commemorating suffrage events. The work of curators, especially at the Museum of London and National Library of Australia, Canberra, also enabled wider access to the movement's ephemera. Subsequent generations have ‘remembered’ suffrage in different ways, including depiction in fiction, film, local histories and the physical landscape. An exploration of such depictions might help us start to understand the continuing fascination with this aspect of women's history.     

Women Activists: rewriting Greenham's history

The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp protest of the 1980s and 1990s has become synonymous with radical feminism. Given that many of the challenges raised and discourses employed were similar, it might appear as a relatively uncomplicated progression from Women's Liberation. From this perspective, the threat of nuclear war could be viewed as a stark indication of the persistence of male violence enabled by an unremittingly patriarchal world. The women's protest was therefore often described by those who took part as a direct challenge to the status quo, intended to bring about the cultural revolution required to overthrow it. This article examines two histories of the event published in the ‘post-feminist’ era of the mid 2000s. It will demonstrate how a shift in discourses since the end of the protest has enabled these emergent texts to challenge the previously dominant version of the Greenham peace camp. It will go on to suggest that this shift was necessary in order to communicate a new contemporary political message: a message that gains its authority by drawing on other ‘silent’ discourses from Greenham. It will compare this development to the post-suffrage period as observed by other historians. In so doing, it will once again reveal how closely the ‘present’ influences the reflections of the ‘past’, and how this affects the performances of participants in their autobiographical accounts.     

Once Again in Chicago: revisioning women as workers at the Chicago Woman’s World’s Fairs of 1925–1928

The ‘woman doctor question’ was a title given to the public debates that erupted in early twentieth-century New South Wales (Australia) over the employment of women doctors in general hospitals. Two wellqualified women, Drs Susie O'Reilly and Jessie Aspinall, were rejected from hospital residencies in Sydney, which led a wide variety of groups and individuals to mobilise in print, not only to denounce the specific rejections but also to challenge the gendered thinking that underpinned them. The arguments and rhetoric of the newspaper debates turned on notions of ‘appropriate’ women's work, the gendered world of hospitals, and assumptions about the gendered nature of medical practice itself. Public discussions of the ‘woman doctor question’ provide a rich source for historians, although for some reason they have been previously overlooked. While the rejection episodes have long formed part of the mythic world of pioneering women in Australia ‘having been seized upon by early historians as vivid examples of women's professional disadvantage’, the deeper cultural meanings and consequences embedded in these debates have been neglected. This article investigates the course of the debates and why they were so passionately contested. Examining the rhetoric used during ‘all this fuss’ (as one participant dismissively phrased it) highlights the significance of the gendered body for the ways in which medical practice was perceived, and ultimately, for how medicine was practised.     

Gender troubles,Redux

Thirty years ago, women's history written from a feminist standpoint was the revolutionary force, challenging androcentric thought and definitions of experience. Today, gender has become the more threatening moniker to those who would maintain patriarchal power and suppress knowledge. While not new, recent attacks on ‘gender ideology’ by conservative, often labeled right-wing governments, threaten the continuation of degree programs, as in Hungary, and pose manifold dangers to scholars world-wide. In the context of women's and LGBTQ movements, twenty-first century globalization, and political and economic changes, those who cling to the gender binary simplify the subject of women's history.     

The economic role of middle-class women in Victorian Glasgow

Abstract

It has long been recognised that working-class women in the nineteenth century participated in waged labour, albeit dependent on marital status, stage in family life cycle, and locality. Middle-class women's economic role has been less fully explored, although it has been acknowledged that they played an informal, ‘hidden’ role in the economy. This article examines the extent of middle-class women's economic activity and independence by looking in detail at a residential area of Glasgow in the period 1850-1914. The authors demonstrate that women could negotiate the parameters of a gendered and limited labour market, the legal constraints on their property rights, and social constraints on their economic freedom, in order to achieve considerable economic autonomy and influence     

the home,the veil and the world: reading Ismat Chughtai towards a ‘progressive’ history of the Indian women's movement

This paper discusses the work of Ismat Chughtai (1911–1991), a controversial writer whose long literary career extending over four decades roughly corresponds to the formative stages of the Indian women's movement. It interprets Chughtai's novella The Heart Breaks Free (1966) to forward an anti-teleological enquiry of the women's movement in India. This progressive teleology often suggested by a discussion of the ‘waves’, ‘stages’ or ‘phases’ of the Euro-American women's movement and adopted to postcolonial women's movements, such as those in India, Jamaica and South Africa, is belied by the piecemeal legislative gains won by activist efforts. Some of the questions governing my enquiry are: What lessons can a questioning of teleology teach us about the gains and losses of postcolonial women's movements? If the alternative to teleology is, as I suggest, a genealogy, then what constitutes a genealogical enquiry into the women's movement in India? In face of apparent and self-acknowledged losses and ineffectiveness in recent times, would the movement's apparent unity across religious differences be a way of initiating such an inquiry or is another mode of analysis required? The paper directs attention to the Indian women's movement's attempts at bringing together women of different religious persuasions, legislative, and religious edicts related to Muslim women's right to co-habitation and divorce, and ‘cases’ that serve as testing points of the movement's struggle against religious and state authority. It also points to the neglected factor of economic security for women as a way in which a genealogical inquiry can proceed so as to strengthen the legislation and the movement itself.     

Creating a Space for Absent Voices: Disabled Women's Experience of Receiving Assistance with Daily Living Activities

Feminist research on community care and ‘informal carers’ identified this as a women's issue but failed to address the interests and experiences of older and disabled women - those who received ‘care’. One consequence is that such feminist research has implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, undermined disabled women's rights to a home, children and personal relationships. Using qualitative research, the article highlights the actual experience of women whose physical impairment means that they need help with daily living activities, looking at the different circumstances in which such help is received.The disability movement's concept of ‘independent living’ raises particular issues for disabled women. ‘Independent living’ is about having choice and control over the assistance needed, rather than necessarily doing everything for yourself. However, gender inequalities may also inhibit the choice and control that women have in their lives.Assistance can be given within a personal relationship as an expression of love, but disabled women may also experience abusive, restrictive or exploitative relationships. Public services do not generally provide assistance in a way which enables a woman to have choice and control in her life, or even to carry out child-caring or homemaking tasks. The research on the various ways of receiving personal assistance found that those women who were able to purchase their own help were most likely to be living independently, in the sense of exerting choice and control in their lives.Feminist research can help to create a space for disabled women's absent voices, and add to the pressure for change in the way that personal assistance needs are met. This is a human and civil rights issue which has a key impact on the control that disabled women have over their lives.     

Landless but not assetless: female agricultural labour on the road to better status,evidence from India

Women's share of agricultural wage employment is rising across the Indian sub-continent. Studies examining this process of feminisation tend to be divided along the lines of an ideological debate following either the ‘poverty-push’ or the ‘demand-pull’ argument. This debate, however, has largely ignored the institution of patriarchy. In this study we revisit the debate with a focus on gender relations. The study is based on data collected from 291 households in the state of Andhra Pradesh. We find that, despite increased labour market participation, women's household status, her wages and working conditions remain acutely depressed. Women labourers with access to productive assets, however, are effectively expanding their agency within both the household and the labour market. Their experiences, we argue, have implications for transformative policies.     

Labour relations in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors: Report of a case study in South Gujarat,India—Part I

The fate of peasants, agricultural labourers and others who leave the agrarian sector, either temporarily or permanently, to seek employment in towns and cities, must be of great interest to anyone concerned with the peasantry. Yet it is an area about which we are remarkably ignorant. Jan Breman's study of the ‘labour relations’ (or, one might say, the ‘poverty') of those who are, to a significant extent, first‐generation town‐dwellers, or who, indeed, although they seek employment in towns, have not yet severed their connections with the countryside, is extremely enlightening in this respect. Although it is not directly about peasants we publish it as an important contribution to our knowledge of this hitherto ‘dark’ area, in which rural origins or connections are of manifest significance. The author employs the ‘informal'/'formal’ sector dichotomy, with suitable scepticism, to examine in great detail the labour system outside agriculture in the Valsad district of South Gujarat.?     

Housework,Wages and Money

Abstract

According to a range of authors and popular commentators, the post-Fordist socioeconomic order has produced a new category of female labourer, the ‘female principal breadwinner’. This article opens out this category of worker to critical scrutiny. We suggest that while the very idea of the female principal breadwinner is open to all manner of existing lines of feminist critique, beyond this it forces a confrontation with a number of issues vital to feminist analyses of transformations to women's labour—both waged and unwaged—in contemporary financialised post-Fordism. We pursue two issues in particular. First, transformations to the labour of social reproduction—including transformations to the measurement and valuation of domestic labour—and second, the financialisation (and shifting capacities) of wages specifically and money more generally. We suggest that if transformations to women's labour are to be fully grasped and understood feminist theory must renew and rethink its analyses of domestic labour, wages and money.     

Linking the old world with the new: recent studies of labor migration,race, and political protest in America and the British empire

Labor historians of the Anglophone world can enrich their field by extending the idea of ‘Atlantic community’ to include Britain's former colonies in Canada, Africa, and Australasia. Only in this way can they fully understand the world's first large-scale migration of labor, both voluntary and involuntary, and the cross-fertilization that occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries between social movements such as labor republicanism, the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, and women's labor struggles which may have originated in the UK or the US but which are misperceived if viewed solely in the context of the nation state.     

the reinvention of feminism in Pakistan

This article argues that there has been a significant turn in the discourse of feminist politics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The author suggests that the rise of a new feminism – rooted in Islamic discourse, non-confrontational, privatized and personalized, whose objective is to ‘empower’ women within Islam – is not a post-9/11 development but rather a result of unresolved debates on the issue of religion within the progressive women's movement. It has been due to the accommodation of religion-based feminist arguments by the stronger secular feminist movement of the 1980s that paved the way for its own marginalization by giving feminist legitimacy to such voices. The author argues that the second wave of feminism may have become diluted in its effectiveness and support due to discriminatory religious laws, dictatorship, NGO-ization, fragmentation, co-option by the state and political parties in the same way as the global women's movement has. Yet it has been the internal inconsistency of the political strategies as well as the personal, Muslim identities of secular feminists that have allowed Islamic feminists to redefine the feminist agenda in Pakistan. This article voices the larger concern over the rise of a new generation of Islamic revivalist feminists who seek to rationalize all women's rights within the religious framework and render secular feminism irrelevant while framing the debate on women's rights exclusively around Islamic history, culture and tradition. The danger is that a debate such as this will be premised on a polarized ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ Muslim woman, such that women who abide by the liberal interpretation of theology will be pitted against those who follow a strict and literal interpretist mode and associate themselves with male religio-political discourse. This is only likely to produce a new, radicalized, religio-political feminism dominating Pakistan's political future.     

Labour relations in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors: Report of a case study in south Gujarat,India. Part 2.

The fate of peasants, agricultural labourers and others who leave the agrarian sector, either temporarily or permanently, to seek employment in towns and cities, must be of great interest to anyone concerned with the peasantry. Yet it is an area about which we are remarkably ignorant. Jan Breman's study of the ‘labour relations’ (or, one might say, the ‘poverty') of those who are, to a significant extent, first‐generation town‐dwellers, or who, indeed, although they seek employment in towns, have not yet severed their connections with the countryside, is extremely enlightening in this respect. Although it is not directly about peasants we publish it as an important contribution to our knowledge of this hitherto ‘dark’ area, in which rural origins or connections are of manifest significance. The author employs the ‘informal'/'formal’ sector dichotomy, with suitable scepticism, to examine in great detail the labour system outside agriculture in the Valsad district of South Gujarat.??     

Global feminisms,c. 1870–1930: vocabularies and concepts—a comparative approach

This ‘Viewpoint’ assesses some recent approaches to the study of feminisms across the globe during the c. 1870–1930 period. At a moment when historians are working towards the commemoration of women's partial enfranchisement in Britain in 1918, we consider the intellectual frameworks that most effectively celebrate this achievement whilst also situating the Act within its complex, global context. Reflecting on discussions held at a recent workshop at the University of Oxford, we advocate the effectiveness of a global and comparative methodological approach to question what ‘feminism’ meant to contemporary campaigners. The scrutiny of localised and national issues within comparative and global contexts illuminates the plurality of definitions, vocabularies, and categories relating to feminism that were being used (and rejected) during this era and raises broader questions for the study and practice of feminist history.     

Mary Augusta Ward (Mrs Humphry) and the opposition to women's suffrage[1]

This article analyses the tensions and contradictions in the work of the conservative writer and social reformer, Mary Augusta Ward and her role in the development of a constructive anti-suffragism designated as the ‘forward policy’. Ward's representation of the suffragette in her novel, Delia Blanchflower (1915), is discussed. Concentrating on Ward's principled support for women and her reforming imagination, the article shows how she shared much in common with feminists of her day and suggests ways in which her writing may be mined by historians and literary scholars interested in the history of women's suffrage.     

Labor History on the World Wide Web: Thoughts on Jumping onto a Moving Express Train

Most historians believe that inside contracting (IC), a system that had its origins in the early industrial revolution, remained an important practice throughout nineteenth-century America. Under IC, proprietors appointed a senior worker who agreed to supply components or completed articles at an agreed price. It was the contractor who bore the risk of failure or pocketed the profits. Here was a system that created an alternative locus of power within the workshop. Focusing on machine building, this article argues that IC should be seen as a feature of the earlier nineteenth century, primarily associated with New England's industrial development. In the workshops of 1870s and 1880s Philadelphia, proprietors and workers used the language of ‘contracting’ but its meaning was altogether different. In Philadelphia, a system of piece contracting (PC) emerged, encouraged by the crisis of the 1870s depression, as proprietors attempted to reduce costs and control skilled labour—in contrast to earlier IC which was an expression of owners’ reluctance or inability to take charge. At the Baldwin Locomotive Works and Cramp shipyard a sophisticated system of gang PC also developed. PC did not offer a share of the profits but only limited inducement to a layer of labour aristocrat ‘contractors’; overall, it intended to constrain the world of the skilled mechanic.