‘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.     

Exploring the boundaries of law, gender and social reform

Conclusion Both dowry and domestic violence are manifestations of the socially subordinate position of women in India, in particular of women in relation to and within the institution of marriage. Studies reveal how the socio economic changes ushered in by modernisation have interacted with traditional norms to sustain these practices and through them, the subordination of women. The women’s movement began addressing these social problems through law, and has through the years continued to critique the law for its failure to deliver. The critiques and debates arising from this concern have periodically generated recommendations for law reform, higher sentencing, widening the net of criminalisation, creation of special women’s police stations and courts in addition to strategies for raising gender awareness amongst the judiciary and the police. This article attempts to suggest that the shortcomings of the decades of women’s engagement with the law is not merely because of flaws and gender bias within the law, but more importantly, because of the expectations from the law and the centrality placed on its role in social transformation. The author is a lawyer and researcher based in New Delhi. She is presently Steering Committee member of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, a regional organisation.     

The support function and social change—A feminist case history

The first part of this article describes the history of a Belgian anglophone organisation—W ♀ E (Women's Organisation for Equality)—from the perspective of its role in the process of social change and women's liberation. It then analyses the reasons for W ♀ E's longevity and effectiveness as a feminist support group and as a bridge for women emerging into feminism. Finally the paper suggests how W ♀ E might continue its effectiveness as a support group, but at a new level, taking into account the fact that though women are continuing to need support as they wake up, there is now a large group of awakened women who have been struggling as feminists for a long time.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

‘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.     

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.     

Periodicals by,for, and about women in Britain

Periodicals in general are an underrated resource for researchers, and this is especially true of women's periodicals. For present purposes these can be divided into three categories: commercial, organisational, and feminist. Commercial women's magazines first emerged at the turn of the eighteenth century, and have been increasingly concerned with the domestication of women and with fashionable dress. They have come to be almost entirely controlled by advertising interests. Organisational periodicals frequently demonstrate a tension between the organisation and the women within it, which tends to be resolved to the women's disadvantage. Feminist periodicals first began to appear in the mid-nineteenth century, since when they have undergone various vicissitudes, but at present they appear to be flourishing as never before. The Fawcett Library has been stocking as many women's periodicals as it can, but runs into difficulties of space and categories. Although satisfactory lists of women's periodicals have been appearing, the important task of article-indexing has scarcely begun.     

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.     

Research priorities in women's studies in Eastern Africa

Studies of women as a specific object of inquiry began to become popular in the mid-seventies in eastern Africa. This is related to growing concern among state and international agencies about women as a problem in production and reproduction. The economic crises has led to heightened concern about the political consequences of real declines in income, the high rates of malnutrition and infant and child mortality rates, and the deterioration of peasant agriculture combined with the breakdown of peasant family relations. Women became of pivotal concern in the effort to forestall revolution as well as to increase production of food and export crops, given their central role as food producers in the peasant sector, and as providers of nearly all other family needs in cash and in kind.Two opposing lines have emerged in Women's Studies. One, the integration line, is identified with bourgeois feminism which calls for equal participation in education, employment and other spheres of society while maintaining the status quo of society. Women-in-development (WID) research and actions falls into this category. The other line calls for transformation of society through revolutionary struggles organised and led by the progressive segment of the women masses in Africa. This category is far less defined, in part a reflection of the level of class consciousness and organisation in the region and the way in which women intellectuals are divorced from the masses.Analysis of the issues which have arisen in relevant research indicates the significance of class differentiation among women, and the need to distinguish different kinds of male-female relations both within and across the different classes in society. A critical analysis is needed of Women's Studies which is carefully periodized to take into account different stages in the capital accumulation process and different forms of capital accumulation as these relate to concrete struggles of different classes of women.     

Lavinia seabrooke,gender and state formation in late nineteenth-century South Australia

The strained relations between feminist organisations and the labour movement have often been attributed to the male dominance of the labour movement rather than the influence of class and political loyalties. This article questions that approach. Using the minutes of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Suffrage Society, labour movement organisations, and Glasgow City Council and newspaper accounts, it examines relations between the Independent Labour Party in the west of Scotland and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Suffrage Society. These highlight how the class and political loyalties of feminists from this organisation were as destructive to any potential feminist and non-feminist alliances which would improve the lives of working-class women as the ‘male dominance’ of the Independent Labour Party.     

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.     

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.     

Women and power in Ireland: Problems,progress, practice

A major problem confronting Irish feminists centres on how the transition from a first phase of consciousness-raising and more or less separatist analysis and action to a second phase of broad-based mobilisation for policy-change is to be achieved, without losing sight of, or faith in, the long-term goal of a radical transformation of sexual power relations. As part of the necessary reappraisal of our present position, fundamental to the development of new strategies, this paper describes the extent to which women in Ireland are chronically and grossly underrepresented in power élites, and analyses some of the barriers which have precluded—and in large measure continue to preclude—women's equal participation in the decision and policy-making processes. More optimistically, the conclusion briefly indicates the challenge to traditional forms of political organisation represented by the emergence of alternative forms of political activism, initiated and developed by women over the past several years.     

关于成人高校非会计专业会计教学法的思考

目前,成人高校非会计专业会计教学方面存在着教学目标不明确、教学方法不适合、教材建设不匹配等问题。各成人高校应该针对自身非会计专业会计教学的特点,明确教学目标、整合教学内容、改革教学方法、加强师资队伍建设。     

Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethick: from mission to activism

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the rise of communal religious activities among British women of various Protestant denominations as well as a broader definition of the spiritual for many people. Communal religious service structures created a space in which young, mostly middle-class women could acquire both a degree of autonomy and a sense of effecting change in a wider sphere than would typically be open to them and, just as importantly, allowed them to meet and develop ties with others beyond their immediate family circles. This article looks at how two young women, Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethick, used one such organisation, the West London Mission, as a springboard for wider activism: Emmeline Pethick, as Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, came to prominence as one of the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union, and Mary Neal's work on recovering the disappearing morris dance for the benefit of working-class girls brought her national recognition. Both women benefited from friendship networks which allowed them to draw other women into their work and both faced opposition from male-dominated power structures, but the spiritual element with which they imbued their activism remained integral to their projects and to their lives. Ultimately, though, the evolution of their spiritual beliefs brought them to assess their life achievements in very different ways.     

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.     

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.     

Advocating for the Right: Alliance Defending Freedom and the Rhetoric of Christian Persecution

In this article I trace the legal and cultural advocacy work of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the single largest Christian conservative legal organisation operating in the US today. I begin by locating ADF strategy within the longer history of Christian persecution rhetoric articulated by the Moral Majority during the 1970s and 1980s. I then analyse both legal and cultural outputs of the organisation in two key cases: the so-called bathroom bills limiting transgender access to public facilities in several states, and the service denial of florist Barronelle Stutzman. I argue that by emphasising the perceived vulnerability of white cisgender women and girls in these cases, ADF litigators and cultural producers advance a narrow conception of religious freedom rights located in the specific cultural politics of neoliberal, white evangelicalism. As a result, while these cases have been legislative and policy failures for ADF they nevertheless provide useful insight into the rhetorical project of Christian persecution.