Fifty years have now passed since Linda Nochlin launched a feminist art history by asking, ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ (1971).[1] Since then, several art historians have made cases for the greatness of certain women including Artemisia…
In 1938 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, one of the leaders of the Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU), published her autobiography, My Part in a Changing World. In it she noted, “My thanks are due also to my secretaries, Miss Esther Knowles…
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…
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…
When first introduced to the concept of historical mental mapping, which aims to reconstruct shifting spatial imaginaries of continents and countries, I was struck by the overwhelming dominance of men’s accounts as source material. Was it fair to assume that women throughout history perceived the arrangement of the world’s spaces – countries, continents, regions and borders – in the same way as their male counterparts?
Photo courtesy of Ruth Cayford, MWW. Wednesday 29th September 2021 was no ordinary day in Cardiff. For a start there was glorious sunshine sandwiched in between days of seemingly relentless rain. And it was the culmination of years of planning,…
In 2020 I wrote a piece for the WHN blog about the biography I’m not writing. In ‘Giants and Geniuses’ https://womenshistorynetwork.org/giants-and-geniuses-by-lucienne-boyce/ I explained my decision not to write about someone very famous, or someone who’s described as a ‘giant’ or…
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 –…