In 1964, just a few months after British fashion designer Mary Quant became the center of controversy with her Bazaar boutique in Chelsea, the irreverent miniskirt arrived in Spanish society. Modernity was making strides. The consumer society was burgeoning in…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Beyond the Fragments: 45 Years on
Beyond the Fragments: 45 Years On A free one-day conference at People’s History Museum, Manchester Friday 28 June 2024 Keynote speakers: Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright 2024 marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the seminal socialist-feminist…
“Right, we have to do something about it!”: Policewomen’s agency against the Royal Ulster Constabulary – Dr Hannah West
“Right, we have to do something about it!”: Policewomen’s agency against the Royal Ulster Constabulary ‘The Chief Constable at that time […] decided that he didn’t want women working, really, because they weren’t armed. Everything was getting worse at that…
Reading Collaborative Life Writing in the Memoirs of Princess Daschkaw (1840) – Alexis Wolf
In 1840, Memoirs of Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to Catherine II was published in England. The two-volume text included the personal memoirs of Russian noblewoman Ekaterina Dashkova (1743-1810), one of the most powerful, well-known and misunderstood women figures of…
‘Ane good receipt for the mother in trouball’: The anatomy of a seventeenth-century Scottish medical book – Roslyn Potter
The year is 1649 and Lady Jean Wemyss has a headache. Since paracetamol won’t be invented for another several hundred years, Jean reaches for the next best thing: a handwritten recipe book. The cure, written down in her mother’s neat…
Empire on Fire: The Institutionalisation of Widow Immolation by the British Colonial State in India – Ghazah Abbasi
Please note that this article includes discussion of state violence against women, racism, and violent death. Thousands of Hindu widows burned alive on pyres in colonised India, fanning the flames of British imperial rule. During much of the 19th century,…
‘She has never let her faculties grow dull’: Constance Chellingworth Radcliffe Cooke – Clare Wichbold
Born in London in 1877, Constance Chellingworth Radcliffe Cooke was the eldest child of Charles and Frances Radcliffe Cooke. The family moved to Herefordshire in 1881 when Charles inherited Hellens at Much Marcle. After an unadventurous rural upbringing Constance challenged…
Eva Gonzalès: Pupil, Muse, Artist – Catherine Pell
A small but important work in the collection of the Leeds Castle Charitable Foundation is a pastel portrait, created by the French artist Eva Gonzalès. Born in Paris in 1849, Gonzalès went on to become one of the great female…