Colonising motherhood: evangelical social reformers and Koorie women in Victoria,Australia, 1880s to the early 1900s

Abstract

This article examines the separate worlds of evangelical social reformers of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union and mission-based Indigenous women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the colony of Victoria. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) activists, characterising themselves as the organised motherhood of the world, claimed maternal moral authority to promote for their sex a legitimate place in public life and full citizenship. Simultaneously Koorie women on the scattered mission stations of the colony, their lives under increasingly intrusive surveillance, were forced on painfully unequal terms to negotiate with mission managers and colonial officials for the right even to raise their own children. Unable to perceive the plight of Koorie mothers, the WCTU reformers, characterising themselves as the organised motherhood of the world, aligned themselves with the so-called ‘civilising’ endeavours of their fellow evangelicals, the missionaries, oblivious to their collusion in the colonial state's grievous assaults on Koorie human rights and civil liberties     

Maternity in inter-war Poland: visions and realities

This article examines changes in the position of women within Poland's intelligentsia in the years after the First World War, focusing on the evolution of the role of ‘mother’. Key factors in these processes were, firstly, an increasing number of professionally active women and, secondly, access to birth control. Changing attitudes and practices regarding childcare as well as the relationship between maternity and women's professional activity are considered.     

Women's political participation in inter-war Poland: opportunities and limitations

Abstract

This article analyses women's participation in public lifewithin the framework of the democratic-parliamentarian Polish state (Poland's Second Republic), rebuilt in the wake of the First World War. It examines the activity of women in parliamentary elections in connection with obtaining political rights equal to those enjoyed by men, as well as the role of women's representation in the two male-dominated chambers of Parliament (the Sejm and the Senate). The minimal presence of women in the state apparatus and in political parties and professional organisations is explained in relation to male hostility towards women's active participation in political life, religious opposition (especially from the Catholic Church) and the unwillingness of women themselves to become engaged in ‘pure politics’. Finally, it examines the rapid growth of women's associations (cultural, educational, cooperative, and professional) which, whilst weakly linked to feminism, bonded with competing political parties and blocks. The associations were divided along the lines of national allegiances within the multiethnic state and, during the 1930s in particular (the era of the authoritarian rule of Pi?sudski and the socalled sanacja camp), succumbed to nationalistic tendencies. Nevertheless, it is possible to see women's growing involvement in education and professional careers as a form of participation in public life.     

Iran's pieta: motherhood,sacrifice and film in the aftermath of the IranIraq war

Feminist Review - The Iran–Iraq war, which took place from 1980 to 1988, was one of the longest and bloodiest conventional wars in the history of the last century. The war was also the...     

Unemployed women in inter-war Britain: the case of the Lancashire weaving district 1

Abstract

Women made up a high proportion of the inter-war workforce of the Lancashire weaving district but were concentrated in a cotton industry seriously affected by a collapse in exports. Consequently, in contrast with national experience, they had higher levels of recorded unemployment than men. Exceptionally high levels among married women led to suggestions that many such applicants for benefit were manipulating unemployment insurance regulations. However, evidence suggests that this resulted from difficulties in re-entering a tight labour market after necessary withdrawal, reinforced by employer and trade union practice and discriminatory social policies. Moreover, all women suffered from limited local diversification of women's employment opportunity while multi-income domestic economies inhibited migration.     

Enacting motherhood: time and social change in Chile

Motherhood is changing. An increasing number of women are deciding to remain childless, having fewer children, postponing their transition to motherhood, and simultaneously pursuing careers. These changes are deeply embedded in a reconfiguration of the times of motherhood. Although the intersection of motherhood and time has been widely acknowledged by gender and feminist studies, less attention has been paid to how in the making of motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert time mandates and norms. This article aims to underscore the importance of time and how it relates to the enactment of motherhood in contemporary societies by analysing the planning, timing, sequencing, and simultaneity of the transition to motherhood in Chile. Through the analysis of 15 life story interviews with urban women from Santiago de Chile, this article addresses the intersection between social change, motherhood and time by showing how in the making of the transitions to motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert traditional and emergent cultural mandates and social norms on the times of motherhood.     

The perils of mrs pooter: satire,modernity and motherhood in the lower middle class in England, 1870-1920

Abstract

This article examines some contrasting representations of lower middle-class women, marriage and motherhood in late Victorian and Edwardian England. Alongside traditional cutting images of white-collar men were misogynist criticisms of suburban women as obsessive consumers and irresponsible child-rearers who lowered racial and cultural quality. By contrast, the women who wrote about themselves in an 1898 Daily Telegraph series on working wives focused on practical problems faced by working mothers, traversing the same themes of the double burden, adjusting employment to childcare imperatives, and ‘quality time’ with children, which remain symptomatic of the problems of ‘modern’ motherhood     

Enabling Citizenship: Gender,disability and citizenship in Australia

This paper queries the absence of disabled voices in contemporary citizenship literature. It argues that the language and imagery of the citizen is imbued with hegemonic normalcy and as such excludes disability. Feminist perspectives, such as those which argue for a form of maternal citizenship, largely fail to acknowledge disability experiences. Exclusionary practices are charted and links are made between gender, race and disability in this process. A citizenship which acknowledges disability is fundamental to re-imaging local, national and international collectivities.     

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     

Residential setting and parent-adolescent relationships during the college years

The relationship of residential setting (living with parents vs. living away from home while attending college) and gender with late adolescents' perceptions of their relationships with parents was examined. Four hundred four undergraduates students (mean age=20 years, 4 months) from two midwestern universities completed surveys. Two hundred four subjects lived with their parents and commuted to school, and 200 lived away at college. Controlling for student's age, parents' education, and financial and family considerations as factors in the choice of a college, living away was associated with greater independence, support, and mutual respect between parents and adolescents. In contrast, students who lived at home felt parents underestimated their maturity, and reported more conflict and avoidance in their relationships with parents. Regardless of residential setting, women reported more mutuality and support in their relationships with parents than men. The results suggest the importance of considering contextual issues during the transition to adulthood.This research was supported by a Campus Grant to the first author from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.Received Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan. Research interests include family relationships, cross-cultural studies, and political development in adolescence and young adulthood.Received Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Penn State University. Research interests include competence during the transition to young adulthood, career development, drug and alcohol use.Research interests include adolescents' relationships with parents and peers and cross-cultural studies.