The Women’s History Network blog
During the sixteenth to seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire saw a change in its political dynamic as Imperial women began to influence the decisions of the Imperial court.[1] 1534-1683 is known as the ‘Sultanate of Women’ as Imperial women within…
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…
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]…
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” 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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…