Darning,Doylies and Dancing: the work of the Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs (1904–1913)

The Leeds Association of Girls' Clubs (LAGC) was set up by a group of women, including Hilda Hargrove, Dr Lucy Buckley and Mary and Margaret Harvey, to promote collaboration between the city's girls' clubs. The organisation epitomised women working in partnership whilst reflecting their differing philanthropic and political interests. However LAGC's collaborative approach resulted in liberal consensus which downplayed the significance of girls' working conditions. Throughout the decade LAGC's focus was its annual competitions. These featured utilitarian and decorative handicrafts (darning and doylies) enshrining both frugality and aspiration, alongside dance and drill which channelled girls' vigour. Nevertheless, LAGC's resilience resulted in an organisation which is still in existence.     

Writing suffragette history: the contending autobiographical narratives of the pankhursts

On 10 October 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organisation that was to become the most notorious of the groupings campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian England. Their militant campaign was led by Emmeline and her eldest daughter, Christabel, the WSPU's Chief Organiser, the two younger Pankhurst daughters, Sylvia and Adela, also becaming active in the movement. While all four women wrote accounts of the campaign, the focus here is on the published autobiographical narratives of the three elder Pankhurst women – Emmeline's My Own Story (1914), Sylvia's The Suffragette Movement (1931) and Christabel's Unshackled (1959). In particular, the ways in which these women presented themselves and each other, and how they related the story of their private family relationships as mother, daughters and siblings, is explored     

Gender mainstreaming and the framing of women's rights in Europe: The contribution of the Council of Europe

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cernoises and Horrible Cernettes: a history of women at CERN 1954–2017

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) was founded in 1954 by a group of men seeking to explore the fundamental building blocks of our Universe. Since then, they and a host of international scholars have succeeded, exemplified by the discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 and numerous Nobel Prize awards. But running parallel to the ‘great men’ of high-energy physics, is the untold story of the women of CERN. The organisation is an elite institution, and can thus provide insight into why numbers of women remain low in all facets of its work (except professional administrative). This viewpoint explores the role of women at CERN, both scientists and non-scientists, drawing on archival research from the organisation’s collection in Geneva and interviews, providing an analysis of why gender diversity is still one of the puzzles left for this elite space to solve.     

‘No Suggestion of Suffragettism’: the Blue Blouses in Ireland, 1933–1936

In July 1933 membership of the Irish fascist organisation, the Blueshirts, was officially opened to women for the first time. Within a year the Blue Blouses, as the women's auxiliary was colloquially called, became the largest women's political organisation in Ireland. This article examines the group as a vehicle for the politicisation of conservative pro-Treaty Irish women. The Blue Blouses willingly used parades, mass rallies, athletics, and a specific discourse of domesticity to articulate a strategy of political involvement that did not conflict with the patriarchal presumptions of inter-war Irish political culture. As such, this analysis is intended to augment the history of inter-war Irish women politics that to date has focused almost exclusively on feminist organisations.     

Changing the world: Time,space and perceptions

The vicissitudes of one small feminist organisation are used to illustrate the problems of others, even in the context of a period when attention has supposedly been directed at women. The prejudices and problems experienced have, however, come from other women as well as from men, and these require examination in order to be overcome. The objectives of the organisation are outlined, with several informal strategies that have evolved through the experience of putting the objectives into effect.     

“Everybody's looking at you!”: Girls negotiating the “femininity deficit” they incur in physical education

There is a growing awareness of the complex and largely negative attitudes many girls in the UK hold towards physical activity in general and Physical Education (PE) in particular. This research in the UK involves a qualitative study of six Year 9 girls' experiences and motivations in PE.Reflexive interpretation and biographical analysis of in-depth interviews are utilized to explore the themes of the relationship between “sportiness” and heterosexual desirability; and the polarized images of “tomboy” and “girlie.” Work by Connell [Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and power. Cambridge: Polity Press.] on the gender order, and theories arising from the cultural analysis tradition on teenage girls' subcultures and identity formation are drawn on in order to make sense of the girls' narratives.The findings of this research reveal that images of teenage girls and young women being physically active are non-congruous with the traditional ideologies of acceptable femininity. This paper describes how these girls negotiate the contradictions and the tensions caused by the “femininity deficit” incurred in PE by creating “double identities” and living “split lives.”     

Grand Dames and Gentle Helpmeets: women and the royal honours system in New Zealand, 1917–2000

This article focuses on black and white Christian women's groups in the Anglican and Methodist churches in twentieth-century South Africa. While the Mothers' Union was exported from the metropolitan heartland to the colonial Anglican periphery as a nominally multiracial organisation, Methodist women set up racially divided women's groups, which, nevertheless, intersected in various ways. By the 1960s, Africans dominated the Mothers' Union, and white and mixed-race Anglican women turned to a more liberal alternative, while Methodist women faced growing pressure to form one united organisation. Democratic transition in South Africa found female church groups still wrestling with historic divisions which were not simply racially based, but the black ‘periphery’ was now clearly numerically, if not always organisationally, dominant while its spiritual style constituted the heartland of South African ‘mission’ Christianity.     

Gender mainstreaming and the framing of women's rights in Europe: The contribution of the Council of Europe

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level.     

A Christian Challenge: Chō Takeda Kiyoko and feminist thought in modern Japan

References to Christian women in the English-language scholarship on the history of Japanese feminism have typically focused on one organisation, the Japan Christian Women's Reform Society. Chō Takeda Kiyoko's 1985 book, Fujin kaihō no dōhyō (Milestones for Women's Liberation), offers a more comprehensive and nuanced image of the contributions of Christian women to the elevation of women's status in pre-World War II Japan, by offering case studies of Christian women. These highlight the widespread influence of Christianity among educated men and women, the broad associational networks of the Christian community, the mutually-reinforcing connections between women's activities in the fields of education and journalism, and the personal struggles of Christian women to create a fairer and more moral society. Takeda portrays the Women's Reform Society as a foundational organisation in the history of feminism, but not the sole avenue through which Christian women worked for women's liberation.     

Rosa Vogelstein and her work: in search of the sources of success of the Stettin Women’s Association (Stettiner Frauenverein) at the turn of the twentieth century

At the turn of the twentieth century, Stettin, the major city of the Prussian Province of Pomerania, was the home of the Stettin Women’s Association (Stettiner Frauenverein). It engaged in welfare work as well as educational activity using modern forms of social work focused mostly on supporting lower-class women and children. This article presents the results of research into the sources of success of this organisation. It is worth attention because the organisation was established in a city where, similarly to the entire province, women’s movement demanding changes to behaviour patterns attributed to sex and background did not attract much support. In the light of preserved archives, it was Rosa Vogelstein, the wife of a local rabbi, who wielded decisive influence on this and who with full awareness resigned from exposing her role in the establishment and operations of the association which led to the memory of her achievements gradually fading.     

The Female Body,Work, and Reproduction in Deland,Cather, and Dreiser

After the turn of the century and in large part motivated by the Suffragist movement, women in America were working both to support families at home and for surplus spending money, as Nan Enstad documents. Census reports from the time reveal women working at everything from menial labor to banking and canalboat captaining (Albertine 240-49). Correspondingly, the popular literature of the early twentieth century tells the stories of working- class women in which work, instead of men, becomes the seductive force from which young women must be rescued (Hapke 6). In spite of the popularity of these dime-novels, contemporaneous works like Margaret Deland's The Iron Woman (1911) and Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (1913) also exist that show working women as executing important leadership work, instead of factory work or domestic labor, that was not typically assigned to women at the time. Furthermore, in going beyond the common turn-of-the-century tale of the oppressed factory girl, these works instead show an important and unique relationship between women and work that has yet to be considered by scholars of American literature.     

Gendering exploitation: the use of gender in the campaign against driving in Lancashire weaving sheds, 1886–1903[1]

Abstract

This article, by focusing on the Lancashire cotton weaving industry, explores the implications for gender relations of an organisation of the labour process characterised by the virtual absence of any differentiation of the workforce along gender lines. In the use made of gender by trade unions in their campaign against methods of pressurising workers to increase output, the construction of difference emerges as central to the structuring of gender relations. The article demonstrates further that conditions in cotton weaving engendered a female identity that revolved around women weavers' ability to perform a skilled job. Failure to attain this standard of proficiency at work resulted in despair, leading in extreme cases to such women committing suicide.     

Maternalism,professionalism and industrial welfare supervisors in World War I Britain

Abstract

During World War I industrial welfare work was firmly established as an occupation, especially in munitions factories under the Ministry of Munitions. This article explores the significance of the fact that the majority of the welfare supervisors employed during the war were women. Welfare supervisors are one example of the ways in which middle-class women grasped career opportunities offered by the war. Much of their work epitomized contemporary concepts of ‘womanly' duties and was designed to protect women workers as mothers of the race. Women welfare supervisors were caught between the proto-welfare state's espousal of the ideology of maternalism, and their aspirations to professionalism. To claim the status of professionals meant, not only proving their abilities, but also conforming to masculine norms of efficiency, rationality, expertise, organisation and status. By the end of the war, women welfare supervisors who sought to stay in the field had built a strong central organisation which proclaimed industrial welfare work as a professional part of management. Women's entry into the managerial level through welfare work, consolidated after the war, challenged the patriarchal hierarchy and traditions of business and industry. Thus women welfare supervisors juggled the feminine and masculine definitions of their work, but increasingly stressed its masculine managerial dimensions to claim management status.     

‘One Can Only Guess What Might Have Happened if the Worker Had Not Intervened in Time': the Liverpool Vigilance Association,moral vulnerability and Irish girls in early- to mid-twentieth-century Liverpool

In early- and mid-twentieth century Britain, members of the Liverpool Vigilance Association (LVA) unofficially policed those who entered Liverpool's port and railway stations. The organisation feared that Irish female newcomers in particular lacked the social wherewithal necessary to maintain their perceived purity within a city such as Liverpool. Whilst the supposed innocence of Irish women was a respectable quality, the LVA believed it also made them vulnerable to exploitation. Consequently the young, Irish, female traveller was central to Liverpudlian social purists' notions of urban moral danger and their belief in the importance of preventative patrol work.     

From the margins to the center: urban housing for single Jewish women in pre-state Israel

From the mid-1920s on, single urban Jewish women in Palestine under the British Mandate (1920–1948) experienced a chronic shortage of suitable and affordable lodgings. This spurred Zionist women’s organizations to take action and solve the problem. Their cooperation led to building four ‘Women Pioneers’ Houses’, which offered single immigrant working women modern lodgings and vocational training. Women architects designed the buildings, keeping in mind their future women residents. The buildings’ architects, who had studied and worked in Europe before immigrating to Mandatory Palestine, applied modernist concepts to the buildings’ design. All the houses followed the highest contemporary standards of living and working environments. They became urban female hubs and notable socio-cultural forces in the city, eventually reaching beyond the female sphere, and offering the public at large a variety of activities. The houses had significant visibility and prominence in the urban landscape and were a source of pride for women.     

The Australian Women’s National League and Democracy, 1904–1921

The Australian Women’s National League was founded in response to the gaining of the federal franchise by Australian women. It founders were conservative elite women whose politics were anti‐democratic, laissez faire and opposed to the public exercise of women’s citizenship. The League’s interaction with democracy proved to be mutually constitutive. The League’s crude anti‐socialist ideology and its capacity for electoral organisation gave the AWNL an impact on the content and conduct of Australian democracy which far exceeded that made by other groupings of political women. And the League’s platforms and programmes slowly broadened to include state action in progressive and even feminist causes. But its continuing refusal to endorse a public role for political women limited the League’s ability to appeal to a new generation of progressive women.     

A Prospective Study of Individual Factors in the Development of Weight and Muscle Concerns Among Preadolescent Children

The present study was designed to assess body mass index (BMI), self-esteem, parent and peer relations, negative affect, and perfectionism, as predictors of dieting, food preoccupation, and muscle preoccupation, in 326 preadolescent children (150 girls and 176 boys) aged between 8 and 10 years. Preadolescents were tested twice over a 10-month period. BMI was found to be the main predictor of girls' and boys' dieting, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Perfectionism was an important predictor of boys' dieting and muscle preoccupation, while self-esteem, peer relations and negative affect predicted girls' muscle preoccupation. The findings are discussed in relation to past research with both preadolescents and adolescents. Marissa Saling is a registered clinical psychologist. She received her Doctor in Psychology (Clinical) in 2003 from Deakin University, Melbourne Australia. Her major research interests include eating disorders and chronic fatigue syndrome. Lina Ricciardelli is a Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. She received her PhD in 1990 from the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her major research interests include disordered eating, body image concerns and substance abuse among youth. Marita McCabe is a Professor at Deakin University. She received her PhD in 1981 from Macquarie University, Australia. Her major research interests include disordered eating, body image concerns, sexuality and chronic illness across the lifespan.     

‘Hand in hand with the women,forward we will go’: welsh nationalism and feminism in the 1890s

This article explores the history of women's liberalism in Wales in the 1880s and 1890s, during the period of the Liberal nationalist movement known as Cymru Fydd or Young Wales. The Welsh Union of Women's Liberal Associations (WUWLA) was founded in 1892 to provide an important bloc of votes for the Progressive (Suffragist) faction in the Women's Liberal Federation, but its aims combined Liberal, Nationalist and feminist objectives. This article argues that briefly, and uniquely, in the 1890s, the WUWLA was able to bring together feminism and nationalism in British party politics, despite some opposition from its own nationalist members. The active intervention of women ensured that the masculinist language of nationalism shifted to an emphasis on equality of the sexes. In 1895, Cymru Fydd, embodied in the Welsh National Federation, espoused women's suffrage among its objects, and gave women's organisations special representation in its structures. This change is explored both through the writings and the events – a series of meetings and conferences – which led to the formation of both the WUWLA and the Welsh National Federation. But the weakness of liberalism at the end of the 1890s, together with divisions within Wales, meant that the new politics was short lived. The decline of women's national organisation after this period, though not fully explored here, can be linked to those problems, but also to the rifts created between Liberals, women and men, over the issue of women's suffrage in the Edwardian period.