A feminist family: the stracheys and feminism,c. 1860-1950

This article explores the importance and meaning of feminism within one prominent British family across two generations, spanning the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It discusses the changing nature of feminist activism, the ways in which suffrage and feminist activities could become full-time occupations for some women and looks at the links between personal or personal relationships that this sometimes entailed. Focusing on the younger women in the family, however, it also shows how feminism came to be seen as antithetical to modernity and as having little to offer those who sought personal and sexual emancipation in the period after the First World War.     

Prostitution, morality crusades and feminism: German-Jewish feminists and the campaign against white slavery

Feminism did not come easily to Germany's middle-class Jewish women. Moral outrage against white slavery and prostitution, however, led many religious housewives to join the Jüdischer Frauenbund (League of Jewish Women), a Jewish feminist organization. Their attitudes towards their ‘victimized’ or ‘erring young sisters’, their motivations for fighting white slavery, and the tactics they employed in their campaigns are examined in this essay. While they emphasized the virtues of purity and invoked Jewish ethical codes, theirs was not simply a morality crusade. The feminist founders of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (JFB) struggled to persuade their more conservative followers that the sexual abuse of women was linked to their inferior status in German society and Jewish culture. These leaders successfully convinced JFB members to take a giant step beyond their traditional family roles and charitable activities in order to challenge sexism. Thus the fight against white slavery became instrumental in serving wider feminist goals.     

Social motherhood and the sexual communion of labour in British Social Science, 1850-1950

This article explores the way in which women both accepted and subverted the sexual division of labour in middle-class social science between 1850 and 1950. For women facing a mid-nineteenth century crisis in femininity, the kind of social science embodied in the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1857-86), offered a promising pathway into the public sphere. This article examines how women helped to develop the two key conceptions of the sexual communion of labour and of social motherhood, conceptions which structured their role in social science well into the twentieth century. However useful these concepts proved in their negotiations with middle-class men for public space, the contradictions in their practice of social motherhood posed real problems for the creation of sisterhood with working-class women     

Citizens not feminists: the boundary negotiated between citizenship and feminism by mainstream women's organisations in England, 1928-39

Abstract

This article explores the concepts of citizenship and feminism as interpreted by six large voluntary and mainstream women's groups in England during the years 1928–39. The six organisations considered here are the Mothers' Union, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Catholic Women's League, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds and the National Council of Women. The article asks why these organisations, which declared they were not feminist were committed to highlighting, and fighting for, the rights of newly enfranchised women citizens. It is concluded that for these organisations the concept of citizenship for women, as opposed to feminism, was a more effective way to secure social and economic rights for the majority of women during the inter-war period.     

Law and disorder at home: free love,free speech,and the search for an anarchist utopia

Japan's trade unions were a crucial battlefront in the Cold War. Western governments and trade unions made every effort to integrate Japanese labor into the Free World, but the ‘anti-communist’ and the ‘social democratic’ approaches competed against each other in their dealings with the neutralist Sohyo. The former hard-line measures by the Republican Administration and the American Federation of Labor merely resulted in the formation of a small right-wing national center Zenro in 1954. After the mid 1950s, international economic interdependence promoted the latter conciliatory policy of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the International Metalworker's Federation (IMF), the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Trades Union Congress, the US Democratic Administration, and the British government. The establishment of the IMF–Japan Council as well as Zenro's affiliation with the ICFTU in 1964 was a great turning point in the process of incorporating Japanese labor into the Free World.     

Sexuality and citizenship: the state and girls' leisure provision in England, 1939-45

ABSTRACT

The main feminist conceptualisation of women's close relationships from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century characterises these as ‘romantic friendships’ and argues that a stereotype of ‘the lesbian’ was invented by sexologists such as Havelock Ellis and applied to these relationships in order to condemn them. A number of pieces of primary research are presented which suggest that this approach is highly problematic. In the case of Emily Wilding Davison's close relationship with Mary Leigh there is simply too little historical evidence to be able to draw any conclusions as to its character or its meaning for the women concerned. In addition, Edith Lees Ellis has been seen as a woman whose romantic friendships were ‘morbidified’ as lesbianism by her husband Havelock Ellis, although in this case archival evidence clearly shows that she certainly saw herself as a ‘invert’. And relatedly, the same archival source also shows that some women experienced their sexuality in ‘mannish’ terms in the absence of any evidence of an influence on them of the pejorative writings of sexologists. Rather than premature theoretical generalisation, what is needed is more primary research on particular women's close relationships and the social context in which these were located.

     

Educated doubt: women,religion and the challenge of higher education,c. 1870-1920[1]

Abstract

The advent of higher education for women, with its emphasis on reason, on scientific thought and on critical approaches to knowledge, constituted a potential threat to religious belief. The stories of male ‘doubters’ are legion but what happened to thoughtful women, confronted with challenges to their belief systems? This article shows that educated doubt was not only a male affliction. Women responded to the challenge in a variety of ways. Some rejected belief, turning their religious impulses to aesthetic or social ends. Others brought scientific reasoning to bear on religious phenomena, hoping to ‘prove’ the existence of spirituality. Some saw in science and reason a further manifestation of the spiritual impulse; in education further possibilities of the life of the spirit. A common thread unites the responses, the search for a voice, an authority which women sought in the new secular institutions of higher learning.     

Bridging cross-cultural feminisms: annie besant and women's rights in England and India, 1874-1933

Abstract

Annie Besant was a Victorian radical whose outspoken views included advocacy of women's rights and opposition to British imperial policies. In her mid-forties she went to live in India. Contesting British attempts to Westernize Indian society, Besant found herself in the seemingly anomalous position of defending traditional Indian patriarchy and resisting efforts to reform the status of Indian women. Such conservatism brought on Besant criticism not only from Western liberals and Christian missionaries, but also from many Indian social reformers. When she gradually shifted her views and voiced her support for Indian women's rights, Indian nationalists condemned her as a British imperialist. The conflict between loyalty to national heritage and opposition to traditional patriarchy is one that colonized women have commonly experienced. By examining how an anti-imperialist British feminist responded to the question of women's reform in India, this paper offers another perspective on the complexities of this dilemma.     

Mona Caird (1854-1932): wild woman,new woman,and early radical feminist critic of marriage and motherhood1

Abstract

This paper, which makes available previously unknown pictures and personal information drawn from interviews, introduces aspects of the life and work of a neglected First Wave feminist writer. In particular, it examines Caird's analysis of the social construction of marriage and motherhood and the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships. The conceptual framework within which Caird wrote, while being embedded in its historical context, bears striking resemblance to some theories within Second Wave thought, especially those of Carol Gilligan and Adrienne Rich. The paper addresses the problem of how to negotiate the danger of ahistoricism when establishing ideological and conceptual links between feminists of different historical periods, and argues for regarding Caird as a radical feminist in the making.     

Leaving home: Irish press debates on female employment,domesticity and emigration to Britain in the 1930s

Although Ireland has had a long history of female emigration, the 1930s saw an important shift in emigration patterns. In the context of southern Irish nation-building, the emigration of tens of thousands of young Irish women to Britain raised serious questions about the opportunities and roles of women in the Irish Free State. This article analyses the Irish print media of the 1930s as discursive spaces within which female emigration was repeatedly highlighted and debated. Discussions of female emigration were usually related to issues of female education, female employment and the duties of women within the home. These issues need to be located within the specific context of Irish Free State economics and politics. The Conditions of Employment Act (1936) and the Constitution of 1937 were legislative measures that attempted to define and regulate the role of Irish women. But that is not to imply a simple ideological hegemony in the Free State; I argue that the media debates reveal the competing discourses surrounding women's roles in the newly established nation state. For example, one view was that young women and girls should be given training and preparation for emigration, another view was that plenty of jobs were available at home, while a third view was that women should be content to remain within the domestic sphere. The much-repeated view that women would be better off (at home) illustrates the overlapping constructions of home – domestic sphere – and home – the nation. The overlapping and interconnecting of these home spaces signified a blurring of boundaries that meant Irish women were expected to carry the responsibility for national as well as domestic well-being.