Join us for the first seminar of our Spring series, featuring Dr. Jana Matuszak speaking on ‘Defining the Ideal Woman, 2000BCE: A Perspective from Sumerian Didactic Literature’! Wednesday, 12 January 2022 at 4pm GMT Register on Zoom here. ‘Defining the…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens by Anna Turnham
British Library Exhibition 8 October 2021 – 20 February 2022 Image: Signature of Mary in letter from Mary, Queen of Scots to Elizabeth I, 8 November 1582, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C vii, f. 81v 1]…
Finding Ethel Davis (1865-1948) by Clare Wichbold
When I began researching Hard Work – But Glorious: Stories from the Herefordshire Suffrage Campaign, I was keen to find images of the women I was writing about. Their thoughts and words were important but being a huge fan of…
“Shall we break this law?” Kitty Marion: An Actress who became a Pioneer of Birth-Control by Twisha Singh
“Shall we break this Law” stared me in the face from the cover of the “Review”. “Law” indeed! That was no law, but a tyranny forced upon voteless women buy a “morality” fanatic, Anthony Comstock, in 1887, and so far…
Disabled Women in Remploy – by Andy Holroyde
Remploy was created by the British Government towards the end of the Second World War to provide sheltered employment – a term used to describe workplaces dedicated to employing disabled people in an environment ‘sheltered’ from the competitive pressures of…
‘Blind Lady Guardian’: the radical life of Edith Maurice Vance, by Madeline Goodall
Edith Maurice Vance (née Emma Morris Vince) was a freethinker and radical whose life was animated by her involvement with innumerable progressive movements. Secretary of the National Secular Society for over three decades, Vance was also on the Executive Committee…
‘Witty above her sex’: Restoring Shakespeare’s Women to the Record
This weekend, over 400 years ago, Anne Hathaway married William Shakespeare. This year, at last, Anne and her daughters Susanna and Judith were given their proper place in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In the late nineteenth century, Virginia Woolf’s…
Disability, Dance, and an Oppressive Mobilisation of Looking, by Georgia Gardner
I have been careful to also engage with disabled scholars whose experiences of disablism differ from my own, recognising the diversity within the disabled community. The patriarchal conditions of classical ballet illustrate the convergence of the male and clinical gazes,…
Reimagining Women’s Sexual Agency in Eighteenth-Century Presbyterian Ireland, by Frances Norman
On 1 December 1710 Sarah Campbell and the married John Wilson appeared before the Presbyterian Kirk Session of Carnmoney, county Antrim, acknowledging their guilt of adultery and desiring baptism for their child. After rebuking the pair for the offence caused,…