‘If I strive not after my own salvation,who shall strive for me,and if not now,when?’ The Role of Religion in the West Central Jewish Working Girls' Club, 1893–1939

This article looks at the inclusion of religion within the West Central Jewish Working Girls' Club in London through newspapers, club histories and oral testimonies. Previous scholarship has downplayed the religious element in Jewish youth clubs; however, this article will demonstrate that religion was a factor within the activities of the West Central Club. Drawing on reports from the club leaders, this article will show that religion was present through prayers and services held on the Sabbath, and, where possible, this religion promoted domesticity for young women.     

Strategies of Resistance: Diversification and Diffusion

Why do organizations choose to use nonviolence? Why do they choose specific nonviolent tactics? Existing quantitative work centers on mass nonviolent campaign, but much of the nonviolence employed in contentious politics is smaller‐scale nonviolent direct action. In this article, we explore the determinants of nonviolence with new data at the organization level in self‐determination disputes from 1960 to 2005. We present a novel argument about the interdependence of tactical choices among nonviolent options in self‐determination movements. Given limitations on their capabilities, competition among organizations in a shared movement, and different resource requirements for nonviolent strategies, we show that organizations have incentives to diversify tactics rather than just copy other organizations. The empirical analysis reveals a rich picture of varied organizational resistance choices, and a complex web of interdependence among tactics.     

Persistent Disadvantages or New Opportunities? The Role of Agency and Structural Constraints for Low-Achieving Adolescents’ School-to-Work Transitions

School leavers with low educational attainment face great difficulties in their school-to-work transitions. They are, however, quite heterogeneous in terms of their personal and social resources. These within-group differences may influence who shows initiative during the school-to-work transition period and thereby helps employers recognize their learning potential at labor market entry. Yet this recognition also depends on the ways employers select applicants, which may prevent them from discovering such within-group differences. We therefore investigate the interplay between agency and its constraints, that is, whether higher cognitive and noncognitive skills and more parental resources provide low-achieving school leavers with new opportunities in the school-to-work transition period or whether their low school attainment causes the persistency of their disadvantages. We use panel data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), which started in grade 9. The NEPS also includes school leavers from special-needs schools. Our sample consists of 3417 low-achieving adolescents (42% female), defined as adolescents who leave school with no or only a lower secondary school-leaving certificate. Their average school-leaving age is 16 to 17 years. Our key findings are that the transition period opens up new opportunities only for those low-achieving adolescents with better vocational orientation and higher career aspirations, leading them to make stronger application efforts. The success of youth’s initiative varies considerably by school-leaving certificate and school type but not by competences, noncognitive characteristics, and parental background. Thus, the label of “having low qualifications” is a major obstacle in this transition period—especially for the least educated subgroup. Their poor school attainment strongly disadvantages them when accessing the required training to become economically independent and hence in their general transition to adulthood. Our results are also of interest internationally, because participation in firm-based training programs functions as the entry labor market in Germany. Thus, similar explanations may apply to low-achieving adolescents’ difficulties in finding a job.     

A picturesque travelogue: Mary Wollstonecraft's “letters written during a short residence in Sweden,Norway, and Denmark”, 1796

The article presents a reading of Mary Wollstonecraft's “Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark”, dated 1796, in which the concept of the Picturesque is used as an analytical framework. The Picturesque is a contemporary British aesthetics concerned with how we look at landscape, and with the aestheticism of viewing. It is suggested that the Picturesque offers a new way of understanding Mary Wollstonecraft's position in‐between Enlightenment and Romanticism, Revolution and Restoration, authorship and journalism.     

Life into art and art into life: visualising the aesthetic woman or ‘high art maiden’ of the Victorian ‘renaissance’

There has been a great deal of research concerning the effect of aestheticism on men in the late nineteenth century, especially in terms of their sexuality, but its impact on women has been largely dismissed as unnecessary, as women were naturally ‘feminine’. This article examines whether ‘the self-absorption and heightened emotional life of Aestheticism’ (J.B. Bullen, 1998 [Oxford: Oxford University Press]) was tolerable in women or if it was leading to disease, decay and corruption. Aestheticism's insistence on individuality and self-discovery were to have important consequences for women, fuelling the desire for a life of their own rather than solely service to others.     

‘THE QUALITY AND NOT ONLY THE QUANTITY OF AUSTRALIA'S PEOPLE’

This article is an examination of Ruby Rich (1888–1988), an Australian feminist, concert pianist, Zionist, pacifist and eugenicist. Although much lauded by her peers, Rich has gone largely unexamined by historians, particularly in contrast to the recent research on her feminist contemporaries Mary Montgomerie Bennett and Bessie Rischbieth. I draw attention to Rich's remarkable life and varied experiences, and use her example to explore the relationship between feminism and eugenics in twentieth-century Australia. From the early 1920s, Rich became a prominent figure within several Australian feminist organisations and in 1926 was appointed the founding president of the Racial Hygiene Association of NSW, an organisation which espoused eugenics. Although it is often assumed that eugenics is innately anti-feminist, Rich remained an active champion of both feminism and racial hygiene for over 50 years. Her example therefore provides an opportunity to trace the unlikely sympathies between these two movements, and highlights the extent to which eugenics found acceptance among progressive members of the Australian community.