2015 is the year to ensure that women’s records are recognised as not only a significant but a central part of US history. The Trust calls for entries, nominations and positive suggestions to recognise women in US history – from all backgrounds, all states and territories, all centuries, all fields of endeavour. The call is on for women to come to the fore, for those who care about US history and herstory, for those who recognise women as equal participants in the building of the country to act! Don’t let another year go by without ensuring the recognition of women through places, spaces, communities, buildings and sites.
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Strong Willed & Courageous … Margaret Schencke – A Woman of Fortitude
Margaret Schencke (Gretel in Germany, Margot in Britain) was born in 1888 in Zwickau in Saxony, Germany. She was the only child of her father’s second marriage, but she had several half-brothers and sisters from her father’s previous marriage. Margot…
Young Adult Literature – Censoring Teenage Sexual Autonomy
In the novels by Blume, Klein, et al, ‘two nice kids, in love, have sexual intercourse and no one dies.’ In both Blume’s ‘Forever’ and Klein’s ‘It’s Ok if you Don’t Love Me’, the male love interests are the ones left alone, the girls having moved on and embodied the traditionally ‘masculine’ relationship role. The young women in these books enjoy sex, and their experiences are discussed in detail. Crucially, they enjoy sex as just one component of a rounded lifestyle, as with Blume’s Sybil: ‘Sybil Davison has a genius IQ and has been laid by at least six different guys.’
Who Was Miss Hooper?
Miss Hooper makes an intriguing sight, wrapped up against the elements. You can’t see her face, but this isn’t the only source of mystery – there is also wonder about what she’s doing out there in the hills and how she can even survive, seemingly against the odds. A woman alone in the bitter cold, she seems almost to be a relic from the past.
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 3
The situation concerning pandemic male violence against women and girls is dire because men’s backlash against women has been ongoing for more than two decades. Not only has male violence against women been successfully depoliticised individualism is now dominant wherein men claim that women and men are symmetrically situated and women magically have limitless choices and agency. Each act of male violence against women supposedly happens because the woman made a wrong choice or failed to enact her agency! This ensures the focus is on individual women rather than how society operates whereby male created institutions and structures remain in place and maintain male domination over women.
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 2
One of the central tenets arising from the Women’s Movement in the 1970’s was naming men as those responsible for committing violence against women because feminists recognised that not naming the perpetrators ensures society’s focus is on scrutinising women and blaming them for supposedly provoking or causing male violence against them. Naming men as the agents responsible directly challenges male power over women …
UNRELENTING BACKLASH – Depoliticising Male Violence Against Women: Part 1
The term “gender based violence against women” does not inform the reader who is responsible for committing violence against women. “Gender” is a descriptive term not a human entity. “Gender” cannot commit violence against women so who is being protected by not being named? Perhaps it is women because “gender” is commonly perceived as attributable to women since men have always claimed male as the default generic human and hence no need to name men/males as men/males. Obviously the entities being protected are men because naming men/males as the perpetrators will immediately instigate a male backlash of claims “you are demonising men” or “not all men are violent!”
Remembering Ellen Harris
In the 1920s and 30s, Ellen Harris played an instrumental role in organizing the Children’s Theatre Group in Winnipeg, where she grew up. As a radio broadcaster with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she was the host of “Morning Visit” from 1944 to 1952. Ellen Harris established herself as a public figure in Vancouver and throughout the province and participated in a number of other radio programs and broadcasts. She was also the President and driving force behind the BC Ballet Society. Dance was one of her passions.
Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War & Conflict – Part 3
Everyday life had to go on, despite the challenges, privations and sorrows of this new kind of ‘total’ war. Yet it is clear that whichever combatant nation one looks at, there was a diversity of experience on the home front dependent on place – hence local home fronts – but also on class, on age, and particularly on gender. And that these experiences varied over time.