Nothing Special? Propaganda and Women's Roles in Late First World War Britain

Women's roles and work did not dramatically change during the First World War; their contributions as citizens simply received greater recognition. This article explores women's roles as subjects, objects and producers of National War Aims Committee propaganda in Britain during 1917–18. It examines differing representations of, and outlines the production of, ‘special’ propaganda for women, discussing women's interactions with and employment by the Committee. Finally, it analyses a series of articles which mixed patriotic rhetoric, practical domestic tips and observations on women's ‘new’ work. Far from uncritically accepting their ‘special’, separate place, the evidence suggests that women, as both objects and producers of propaganda, engaged with it on their own terms as British citizens.     

Women's right to work: The interplay of state,market and women's agency

This article addresses questions central to the conception of women's citizenship: Do women have the same right to wage work as men have? That is, do women have the same access to and chances to keep jobs as men? Is women's right to employment perceived as an individual right, disconnected from men's traditional prerogative to hold jobs as breadwinners? Women's right to work is conceptualized as a complex structural and ideological construct, shaped by the interplay of the labour market, welfare state and women's agency. The empirical analysis takes one of the Scandinavian welfare states, Norway, as its main case. The study concludes that women's individual right to work was significantly strengthened from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.     

Performance Anxieties

Drawing on the narratives of 23 un(der)employed trans women residing in Ontario, British Columbia, Canada and Washington State in the USA, this article explores the connections between affect, gender and labour in post-Fordist society. Post-Fordism is characterised in part by the putting to work of immaterial labour. Workers' whole personalities are harnessed to produce value for capital through evoking feelings of satisfaction, security and contentment amongst consumers. While women's employment rates have increased dramatically within post-Fordism, I argue that trans women's experiences of marginalisation within and expulsion from the workplace points to the narrow parameters of femininity deemed capable of producing such positive feelings. Trans women's visible, audible and behavioural cues of gender alterity lend insight into criteria that position some women employable and others disposable.     

Women in Television in the Multi-Channel Age

This article explores the impact of structural and technological change on women's employment in the UK television industry. It looks at the challenges faced by women in working in what has become since the mid-1980s a largely freelance industry where short-term contracts, informal recruitment procedures and long, unpredictable work schedules mean that women find it increasingly difficult to combine a career and family. Through case studies of individual careers, of a women's magazine programme for S4C Digital and a survey of women's credits on a selection of the newer channels (Sky One, UK Living and Channel 5), it argues that technological advances in digital transmission and production will not improve working conditions and opportunities for women's participation in all areas of the industry if they continue to replicate existing practice.     

Bosnian refugee women in (re)settlement: gender relations and social mobility

Bosnian refugee women adapted more quickly than their male partners to their host environments in Vienna and New York City because of their self-understanding and their traditional roles and social positions in the former Yugoslavia. Refugee women's integration into host societies has to be understood through their specific historical experiences. Bosnian women in exile today continue to be influenced by traditional role models that were prevalent in the former Yugoslavia's 20th-century patriarchal society. Family, rather than self-fulfillment through wage labor and emancipation, is the center of life for Bosnian women. In their new environment, Bosnian refugee women are pushed into the labor market and work in low-skill and low-paying jobs. Their participation in the labor market, however, is not increasing their emancipation in part because they maintain their traditional understanding of zena (women) in the patriarchal culture. While Bosnian women's participation in low-skill labor appeared to be individual families' decisions more in New York City than in Vienna, in the latter almost all Bosnian refugee women in my sample began to work in the black labor market because of restrictive employment policies. In contrast to men, women were relatively nonselective and willing to take any available job. Men, it seems, did not adapt as quickly as women to restrictions in the labor market and their loss of social status in both host societies. Despite their efforts, middle-class families in New York City and Vienna experienced substantial downward mobility in their new settings. Women's economic and social downward mobility in (re)settlement, however, did not significantly change the self-understanding of Bosnian women. Their families' future and advancements socially and economically, rather than the women's own independence and emancipation remained the most important aspect of their being.     

The agrarian reform

Around 1860–80 all the central areas of rural women's work in Denmark – spinning, weaving and baking – were gradually taken over by the growing industry in the towns. During the 1880s, also, women's dairy work became a field of male labour in the newly‐established cooperative dairies around the country. The sale of dairy products has played a great role in Danish agriculture and in the national economy from the 1860s until today. The article throws light on the place of women in dairy production until the 1880s and examines the factors which determined their being pressed out of this sort of work. Finally the problems and consequences with which women (and men) were faced when the transition to cooperatives dairies gave rise to an entirely new pattern of work and sex roles are examined.     

女性非正规就业的影响因素研究 ——基于中国社会状况综合调查的实证分析

系统考察女性劳动者选择非正规就业的因素,不仅对揭示其非正规就业选择的机理具有重要意义,而且对其权益保护也具有深远影响。本研究基于中国社会状况综合调查(CSS)数据,分析女性非正规就业的影响因素,并考察影响非正规就业女性选择不同就业身份和职业类型的因素。研究结果表明:非正规就业已经成为女性非农就业的主要途径;户籍等个体特征、家庭中子女数量等家庭因素以及所在地区等对女性劳动者非正规就业选择有显著影响,而人力资本不但对女性非正规就业的选择有显著影响,对其就业身份和职业类型的选择也有显著影响。研究建议:应完善非正规就业政策,结合影响女性非正规就业的因素制定措施保障其合法权益,提升女性劳动者的人力资本水平,进而提高女性非正规就业劳动者的就业质量。     

Unleisured lives; Sport in the context of women's leisure

This article examines women's participation and non-participation in sport in the wider context of female leisure. It begins by setting out the reason why women's entitlement and access to leisure should be a major area of concern for feminists, comparable to employment and domestic labour. It then goes on, drawing partly on a study conducted by the author in the new city of Milton Keynes, to explore the dimensions of and constraints within which women's leisure operates, showing that for most women sport does not form a sizeable part of that leisure. Next some possible reasons why sport does not play a major role in women's leisure patterns and experiences are considered. Finally there is a brief discussion of some of the ways in which both sport and leisure could be made more accessible and responsive to the needs and interests of women, by changing not only aspects of sport and leisure, but also women's overall position in society.     

Constructing women's citizenship in the interwar period: the Edinburgh women citizens’ association

As a new stage in women's political participation, enfranchisement brought new efforts to advance gender equality and women's social position and new organisations were formed of women voters, including the women citizens' associations. Concerns with women's and children's welfare and social reform that had been important to sections of the pre-war women's movement were repositioned alongside the pursuit of an equal franchise, equal pay and opportunities and women's representation, in relation to women's new political status. Study of the women citizens' associations in Scotland supports an account of the period 1918-30 as one of considerable political activity, particularly in developing women's role and influence in relation to established political institutions and civil society. It suggests that the division between ‘old’ and ‘new’ feminisms after 1918, mapped onto the binary of equality and difference, was not necessarily a tension for women's organisations. It gives insight into the meaning of ‘citizenship’ for women activists and how the status, rights and responsibilities of citizenship articulated and shaped a distinctive women's politics, bridging political, civil and social rights.     

Preventing ‘robotised women workers’: women,sport and the workplace in Scotland 1919–1939

This article examines a new area of women's leisure; women's participation in work-related sport. The growth and development of industrial welfare in Scotland in the interwar period will be discussed. Within broader studies, Stephen Jones, Helen Jones and Melling have all indicated that there was a growth in industrial welfarism in Britain from the turn of the twentieth century. This development of welfarism, which included provision of educational classes, pensions and medical support, increasingly also encompassed a variety of sports and physical activities. By looking at case studies, developments in provision across a range of industries will be examined. This discussion will draw on a wide range of sources from a variety of women's employment, from factories to clerical positions and from the retail sector to the civil service. This article will examine the types of sporting opportunities open to women through their workplaces, including organised welfare schemes and independent employee-led activities. Moreover, it will explore working women's experiences of these activities and the ways in which they chose to participate in sport.     

Women's employment and industrial organisation: commercial lace embroidery in early nineteenth-century Ireland and England

Abstract

The early nineteenth century saw expanding work opportunities for women in commercial lace embroidery in Britain. This article traces the connection between the development of commercial lace embroidery in several locations – Nottingham, Essex and Limerick. Despite the fame of the Irish industry, it has received almost no academic attention. The differing structures of the Irish and English industries are examined. Aspects of lace manufacture highlight the increasing emphasis on cleanliness and the respectability of women's work in the nineteenth century. The authors suggest that to appreciate fully the impact of the Industrial Revolution on women's employment opportunities, we must look to the periphery of the national economy, as well as the centre.     

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.     

Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain

Abstract

While scholars have emphasised the positioning of women as wives and mothers in working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England, their position in the workforce remained significant, even in such disparate industries as cotton and chain-making. In the former, while excluded from spinning, women's employment in powerloom weaving brought them into the heart of the production process, encouraging their participation in workplace struggles and ultimately influencing a transformation in the working-class family in terms of fertility control. In chain-making, while some male workers attempted to position women in the domestic sphere, others were dependent on their labour. Cultural constructions of gender were thus undermined, as the struggle for the minimum wage superseded attempts to remove women from the workforce. In neither industry was equality between men and women realised, while antagonism on the basis of gender persisted. Yet women's identification with their work remained evident while mutuality across gender lines was also apparent, as women themselves played an active role in the shaping of gender relations. Conceptions of gender, as they intersected with particular labour market structures, thus came under duress. Consequently, a more complex picture of gender in working-class life emerges than an analysis which privileges cultural constructions would allow.     

The establishing of women's studies in Bulgaria: or how far can you go?

This article examines the problem of establishing women's studies as a legitimate area of study in Bulgarian universities. With the change from a communist to a post-communist society, Bulgaria is finding itself open to outside cultural influences. However, reactions to feminism and to women's studies are largely hostile. This is partly a legacy of the now discredited communist times when words like ‘emancipation’ and ‘equality for women’ were common, words that now have negative connotations in a society where it is assumed that men and women are equal. In addition, the specific social difficulties that Bulgaria is now facing make any new divisions between men and women, which women's studies can imply, yet another dividing line. Various strategies that have been adopted for introducing women's studies into Bulgarian universities are described.     

Women scientists in British industry: technical library and information workers,c.1918-1960

Technical librarianship and information work emerged as a new scientific career in interwar Britain and rapidly became one of the few types of professional industrial employment that was routinely open to both women and men. Drawing on a range of sources, including the records of professional organisations, industrial firms and individual practitioners, this article uses a study of the patterns and practices surrounding women's work in technical libraries and information bureaux to illuminate the ways in which ideas about gender shaped their early non-manual employment in industry. It argues that the hybrid and ambiguously gendered nature of the work involved, which spanned scientific research, librarianship and clerical work, opened up the field to female science graduates but frequently left them confined to those posts which did not confer full recognition of their status as scientists and offered few prospects for career progression. Nevertheless, within these limitations a striking number of women were able to carve out responsible, even pioneering, careers. They did so chiefly as technical librarians who, although usually expected to relinquish any pretensions to equal status alongside their scientific colleagues, could claim distinctive knowledge and expertise within an industrial organisation.     

Rural women migrant returnees in contemporary China

This essay focuses on the experiences of female returnees in rural–urban migration in contemporary China. Based on in-depth interviews with women migrants, returnees, their family members, friends and fellow villagers in both sending and receiving areas, the research examines rural migrant women's return migration process. It investigates rural migrant women's decision-making in the process, the ways women returnees construct their lives in the countryside, their identity negotiation as returnees and the impact of patriarchy on women's experiences of the return and resettlement process. The author argues that despite women's active involvement in migration and the ‘empowerment and agency’ gained through migration, the patriarchal power relations within rural households remain intact and continue to shape rural female returnees' life in their villages.     

Gendered perceptions: women in the labour market in Poland

Abstract

This paper considers the consequences of economic and political change in the early 1990s for women's situation in the Polish labour market. New types of employment emerged in various sectors of the Polish economy around the mid-1970s. Some, such as finance, insurance, education and health care became highly feminised. Under the Communist system, many regulations were introduced to allow women to combine paid labour with taking care of the household. In the new post-Communist economic situation, these gender-specific regulations work against women, making them less attractive to employers. In a situation of high unemployment, employers in the growing private sector can afford to make specific demands of their employees: that they be young, male, and mobile. Women are thus in a worse situation in the labour market even though they are often more educated than the men with whom they must compete for work. There is urgent need to introduce mechanisms to create a more equal labour market.     

Women and radio: sounding out new paths in women's history

ABSTRACT

Since its early introduction in the domestic sphere in the 1920s, radio has been used as a medium for the expression of women's voices, needs and concerns. In this introduction we would like to mobilise an understanding of radio as a vital source for doing women's history. Women's radio programming, women broadcasters, and women listeners provide a lens through which a number of histories can be analysed. This introduction provides an overview of the historical relationship between women and radio. It is further dedicated to research that explores the overlapping spaces of radio and women's history, and in particular, points to how radio-related source material can provide new points of departure for women's history.     

Book Review: Gendered mobility

In the decades after 1945, Danish governments approved a series of family policy reforms which came to constitute the core elements of what is considered the women-friendly welfare state. In order to understand these developments, this article explores the rise of women's political influence, looking specifically at women's agency outside the parliamentary sphere. This article analyses how a network of influential women combined critical resources such as knowledge of families' concerns and inside information from commissions and boards with agenda-setting strategies promoting family policy reforms, even though women constituted a minority in parliament and had no permanent women's state institution. Hence, modern Danish family policy was not a state project granted to women but to a great extent the result of a network of exceptional women setting a new agenda.