The Women’s History Network blog
Approximately 70,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Britain fleeing Nazi persecution from 1933 until the outbreak of the Second World War. 20,000 of those refugees were women who were allowed entry under domestic permits: there were also an unknown amount who…
Women who produced ‘bastard’ children during the Civil War and Interregnum period were often depicted, within both court and popular literature, as ‘lewd women’ in opposition to patriarchally-defined models of the ‘chaste maid’ or legitimate wife. Yet in certain circumstances,…
Carved onto the gravestone of Baroness Mary Vetsera in Heiligenkreuz, this Bible verse provides a sobering outlook on her short life. In the early hours of the 30th of January 1889, seventeen year old Mary was shot – willingly –…
At the Tokyo Olympic Games 2021, women will compete in all thirty-three available sports. In the British team, women will outnumber their male counterparts for the first time in history. By contrast, at the 1948 Olympics, women were restricted to…
In 1663 Anne Knutsford, licensed midwife and moneylender, was issued with an inhibition by the parish of Nantwich against practicing midwifery for ‘lyeing, sweareing and curseing’ amongst other allegations. As if to confirm the charges, Anne allegedly ‘abused the authority…
It is often claimed that tattooed women are a symbol of modernity, defying the restricting beauty standards of society.[1] Nonetheless, more wide-ranging research reveals that this is a generalised and too simplistic a view of tattooed women. My research on…
My project delves into the political strategies and concepts that have powered the trans rights movement in the United Kingdom over the past half-century, particularly the concept of ‘recognition.’ The aim of my research is to understand what ‘recognition’ has…
[i]My life-long fascination with the role of gender in shaping women’s working lives began when, at the age of six, a doctor asked me if I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up. When I answered that I…
I am a minoritized scholar – something that is usually clear by looking at me – working with disenfranchised communities: Black women in nineteenth century France. But I state it clearly when I speak to classes or do more formalized…