This year’s Women’s History Network Conference on the theme of Female Agency, Activism and Organisation took place at the University of Kent in Canterbury. The conference drew in researchers from Australia to Canada, and from Italy to the UK, covering topics from science and medicine to religion and education, to name just a few. In addition to the thought-provoking sessions, the highlight of each day was the Plenary Lectures. Over the course of the weekend there were three plenary lectures, all touching on very different aspects of women’s history. On Friday, Professor Mary Evans discussed woman and poverty in her lecture “‘But We’ve Always Been Poor’: Some Reflections on Women, Poverty and Austerity.’ Professor Evans, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Gender Institute, offered a thought provoking analysis of the linkage between gender and poverty, and the effects of austerity on women.