The 2014 Annual Conference on the theme of Home Fronts Gender War and Conflict was held at the University of Worcester Here is one attendee’s report – ‘With the good fortune to attend with a bursary for volunteers at local…
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Organising Women in WWI
10:30-3:15 Saturday 21st March 2015 at Bantock House Museum, Finchfield Road, Wolverhampton, WV3 9LQ 2015 is the centenary of the formation of the Women’s Institute Movement in Britain and the publication of the Maternity Letters by the Women’s Co-Operative Guild. To commemorate…
Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict – Part 1
War created instant history from 1916 and ever since the history of women and the First World War has been a synonym for thinking about a distinctive female contribution, about the politics of gender and the cultural and social history of war. Looking again at the history is a way of thinking about sources and method, thinking again about how far historians ‘disturb the ground on which they stand’ or how far they build new memorials to the past.
The First 40 Years – The Working Women’s Charter
Elections are often won and lost on women’s swing votes … What better time to start a serious debate on the things that matter to women – and to working women in particular? Of course, this debate is already taking place across the country in organisations from Mumsnet to the 30 Per Cent Group, and from the Fawcett Society to many employers. Just this week, Asda finds itself forced to into the debate via a legal challenge from thousands of its women employees embarking on a new battle for equal pay and recognition. And in Newham, the women activists of Focus E15 may have ended their occupation of empty flats but their battle for basic housing continues.A new Working Women’s Charter could transform these debates – not because a new list of new demands will change anything on its own but because it could harness the energy and promise of growing ‘third wave feminism’ …
Vale Leonore Davidoff (1932-2014)
She dedicated almost a decade to the meticulous research and writing that culminated in her final book Thicker than Water: Siblings and their Relations, 1780-1920, published by Oxford late in 2012 just before her 80th birthday. This pioneering study is yet to receive its full recognition. Leonore demonstrates the significance of sibling relationships and their key role in the extensive family networks that provided the capital, personnel, skills and contracts crucial to the rapidly expanding commercial and professional enterprises of the era, and how these changed as families became smaller from the end of the 19th century. Through studies of particular families (including the Freuds, Gladstones, Wedgwoods and Darwins), she explored sibling intimacy and incest, and some famous brother-sister relationships.
CFP: North West Gender Conference 2015
University of Manchester, Manchester Meeting Place, 10th April 2015 Key Note: Prof. Erica Burman This inter-disciplinary conference is run ‘by PGR’s, for PGR’s’ and will provide a unique opportunity for Postgraduate students to talk about the influence of gender…
Ethical Food – Food, Production & Ethics
Women often can be the first to be marginalised as agriculture is increasingly mechanised. Women tend to have less access to resources, finance or training than men, so land farmed by women is often less productive. If women worldwide had the same access to productive resources as men, this could increase yields on women’s farms by 20–30% and raise total agricultural output by 2.5–4%. Gains in agricultural production alone could lift 100 to 150 million people out of hunger …
WOMAN SLAYS VAMPIRE vs READER, SHE MARRIED HIM … Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs Twilight
… Buffy eclipses the anodyne Twilight series. Buffy is a character in her own right, a woman who, albeit a student still, knows her own mind, acts independently, and leads her team. Even when she consults with her teacher – the school principal, a man ‘in charge’ of the educational institution where Buffy meets and matches the vampires she slays, she consults with him on a basis of equality. He may advise and mentor, but on Buffy’s terms and on Buffy’s ground. She seeks when she chooses to seek information. She assesses and assimilates where she makes the decision that the information imparted is ‘right’. It is no surprise that followers of Buffy included women who took on powerful roles in the polity – at least one, the former Senator Natasha Stott Despoja – going on to lead her political party (the Australian Democrats – AD).