It is well-known that Mary Wollstonecraft travelled to Paris to witness the French Revolution that she had celebrated in A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Less well-known are British women who supported Latin American revolutionaries fighting for liberation from…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Early radio broadcasting for women in the BBC’s Women’s Hour 1923-4 – Kate Murphy
Many readers will know of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, which has been broadcast on the BBC for more than 75 years. Far less well known is an earlier programme called Women’s Hour, which first appeared 100 years ago, on 2…
Biography’s place in the study of sixteenth century Ottoman imperial women – Zhara Adal
The individual lives of sixteenth century imperial women are neglected in Ottoman studies. Scholars have usually focused on their notable achievements rather than their individual lives and identities. For example, Leslie Pierce’s The Imperial Harem (1993) describes the position of…
TERN2023 Epistolary Times / Time in Letters 6-7 October 2023 (online symposium)
TERN2023 Epistolary Times / Time in Letters 6-7 October 2023 (online symposium) The clock is ticking. Schedules, delays, deadlines, queues worry our lives. Letters are often considered in terms of space and geographical distance. In 2023, TERN proposes to revisit…
Finding Betty Joel: Uncovering the hidden histories of interwar design, making and style – PhD opportunity
Applications are invited for a fully-funded collaborative four-year PhD to commence in October 2023 at the University of Portsmouth. The PhD will be based in the School of Art, Design and Performance and will be supervised by Professor Deborah Sugg…
5th April 2023: Academic Fellows Celebration – Early Career Research Fellows Roundtable
Join us for a very special session featuring our Women’s History Network Early Career Research Fellows! Our ECR Fellows will be sharing their work on a diverse and fascinating range of topics from the history of women’s masturbation to the…
Everyday Gays, Ordinary Queers, and the National Lesbian and Gay Survey – Victoria Golding
Pride 1987, 10.10am: ‘Helped E. to throw pills down the cat with cystitis. Washed breakfast dishes. Brought Gay Vegetarian placard up from cellar. Fed goldfish.’ (Correspondent No.157)[1] This National Lesbian and Gay Survey contributor’s account of her involvement in the…
Girls in the workhouse: a question of morality, c.1880-1920 – Claire Phillips
In the late nineteenth century, anxiety was growing throughout society about the suitability of the workhouse for children. Children could enter the workhouse for many reasons: as part of destitute families, as orphans, or as a result of economic difficulties…
Medicine, morals, and masturbating women: John Marten and the changing face of female self-pleasure – Elizabeth Schlappa
From the early eighteenth century to the urban myths of today, masturbation has been credited with causing all manner of bodily miseries. Serious moral and medical alarm about self-pleasure was first popularised by an anonymous pamphlet entitled Onania, or, The…





