At university, I became interested in women’s embodied experiences – considering how women’s bodies are not only passive entities, but a site of empowerment and activism. Hence, when I was introduced to Fat Is A Feminist Issue, an inquisitive nerve…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Hannah Brutton and the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 – by Charlotte Fairlie
While the limitations and inequalities of the 1857 Divorce and Marital Causes Act have led to debate over its significance, the case of Brutton v. Brutton illustrates how it empowered ordinary women to escape unhappy and dangerous situations.[i] Certainly, factors…
Juries of matrons vs. the male “touch:” incarcerated pregnant women, capital punishment, and medicine since the 18th century in the U.S.A – Bethany Kotlar
In 1778 Bathsheba Spooner was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband. She pleaded pregnancy, and according to Massachusetts law at the time was examined by a jury of 12 matrons. The jury found that she was not…
23rd November 2022: MA Prize 21/22 Lunchtime Roundtable Celebration
Join us for a very special roundtable session featuring the recipients of our MA Prize 2021/22 accolades! Our speakers will share their award-winning and shortlisted research, featured in their MA Prize submissions. A wonderfully diverse range of topics will be…
Scent and Sensitivity: Writing Women from their Archives – Victoria Phillips
So, is this a key distinction as we go through the archives of women: we sense their smell, their perfume, or not, as we open folders? And what will it tell us as biographers and historians if we can, or…
Fashioning the Self: Jennie Jerome, a twentieth century Victorian in the Library – Laura A. Macaluso
In 1940, a high school class took lessons at the New Haven Free Public Library. The library, open since 1887—the year Jennie Jerome’s parents were married, and her father, Yan Phou Lee published When I Was a Boy in China—drew…
A Stash of Gems on Women from the Nigerian National Archives – Tayo Agunbiade
Two well-known women-led events in Nigeria’s colonial era are the Aba Women’s War (1929) and Abeokuta Women’s Tax protests (1946/48). Beyond these events, historiographical accounts are mostly written from male perspectives, with women barely mentioned. For instance, the height…
[RESCHEDULED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]: Black History Month Special Seminar – Rediscovering Nigeria’s Suffragettes
ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to extenuating personal circumstances, this seminar has now been rescheduled. Please check back here and on our social media pages for more information as to the new rescheduled date. Apologies to all who have signed up for the…
‘I have always been one of the boys’: Hilda Ramushu and the railways in Zimbabwe, 1970s-1980s – Nicole Sithole
Railways and railway infrastructure are in many ways gendered. The way the train and other public and private spaces of the railways are ordered and used reflect not only cultural, societal, and even political norms, values, and practices, but are…