It’s hard to over-estimate the impact of Spare Rib. Launched in 1972 it caused an immediate sensation. Newsagents across the country, including WH Smith, refused to stock it. Spare Rib was seen as subversive, as indeed it was – a…
Category: Blog
The Women’s History Network blog
Women’s History Month: Lucille Mathurin-Mair (née Waldrond), 1924-2009: Pioneer of Caribbean Women’s History
Lucille Mathurin Mair. Source: The Gleaner, Jamaica, January 31, 2009 http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090131/letters/letters4.html Lucille Mathurin-Mair, who died on January 29th, 2009 aged 85, was a well respected Jamaican historian, author, teacher, activist and diplomat and sustained a deep commitment to women’s rights…
Women’s History Month: Irish Women Patrols
The advent of the First World War forced Irish feminist groups to adjust to new social and political circumstances. Most suffrage organisations participated in the war effort while keeping up suffrage work as much as possible, and many individual members…
Women’s History Month: Health, Beauty and Physical Recreation – women of the keep-fit world
On 30th December 2010, Prunella Stack, a pioneer in the development and spread of female physical recreation in Britain and around the world, died at the grand age of ninety-six years old. Mary Bagot-Stack founded the Women’s League of Health…
Women’s History Network: Diana Leonard, academic and activist
The Feminist Library recently celebrated its 35th birthday with an all out party and benefit at the Round Chapel in Hackney. The enormous success of the event marked an important moment in the library’s history and regeneration. However, someone who…
Women’s History Month: Marie Stopes
On 17 March 1921 Marie Stopes and her husband of three years, Humphrey Verdon Roe, founded the Mothers’ Clinic for Constructive Birth Control at 61 Marlborough Road, Holloway, North London; it was the first birth control clinic in England. For…
Women’s History Month: Before there was Internet 4: Marriage Advertisements
Looking for love in the nineteenth century was often as complicated as it is today. Instead of looking for a soulmate online, men and women placed advertisements in their local paper. Here are some examples from the Irish Times. To…
Women’s History Month: March 15 1912. Christabel Pankhurst and the Lusitania’s portholes
Frenzied by media spin, some people were so exercised by the arson and window-smashing tactics of the Women’s Social and Political Union that they suspected militant suffragettes were lurking everywhere. News-seekers were as avid as reactionaries later seeking Reds under…
Women’s History Month: The Glass Ceiling and the Calculator.
Lord Davies’ report into women in the boardroom highlighted once again the lack of women in the top jobs.Lord Davies said: Over the past 25 years the number of women in full-time employment has increased by more than a third…