Category: Politics

Event, Politics, Women's History

Basque Children and their Seafaring ‘Aunties’ – An Evacuation

WHN / May 20, 2012

In world wars, women, almost always volunteers, escorted children – together with disoriented adult refugees – on British ships. Often they were not even being paid expenses. Some were captured, interned and even killed during their WW2 voyages.

Called ‘aunty’, many of the women were experienced travellers and lively independent types, at a time when women’s mobility was still limited and their solo travel problematic. Unsung and overlooked, these pioneers deserve recognition. They were members of a minority who cleverly utilised gendered conventions (‘women are suitable carers for little ones’) to do all the travelling they could, despite low incomes.

Biography, Event, Politics, Source, Women's History

The Writings of Constance Maynard (1849-1935)

WHN / May 13, 2012

One aspect of Constance Maynard’s life which still intrigues researchers and is the subject of on-going research today is her close relationships with women. As female sexuality was not discussed or understood in the Victorian period, interpreting Maynard’s words requires an appreciation of the context and time in which they were written. Her diary entries detail intimate encounters with students and friends … In her autobiography, Maynard in 1926 writes candidly about her close relationships, showing her awareness of theories by psychoanalysts such as Freud …

Event, Politics, Source, Women's History

Luddite Women

WHN / April 30, 2012

Of the activists, the best-known are the Molyneux sisters: ‘Set fire to it! Now lads!’ the two very young women urged Luddite men on 24 April 1812, at Westhoughton Mill near Bolton, Lancs. It was only an hour after the soldiers sent to protect it had gone away. The mill was a cotton mill, newly driven by steam.

Event, Politics, Women's History

Travelling Women

WHN / April 22, 2012

The idea that the woman at home is nothing but ‘of the home’ was contested by reference to travel artifacts in the home; through furnishings as redolent of places far away – as in drapes and couches, wall hangings and bedding; by use o f cooking utensils such as the wok and bain-marie; so, too, styles of cooking and kitchen, breads and beverages. The challenge of the exotic nature of what is so often classed as ‘domestic’, together with the concept of the window as a ‘window to the world’ whilst also being a window into the world, affirmed both the vitality and the importance of seeing anew.

Event, General, Politics

Pink, Power & Herstory – Colouring Babies Clothes

WHN / April 15, 2012

Contradictions inherent in ‘pink for girls, blue for boys’ exist, too, in directives as to ‘appropriate’ attire for boys and girls. Jeanne Maglaty of Washington’s Smithsonian Institute observes that childhood photographs of Franklin D. Roosevelt are ‘typical of his time’. Photographs from 1884 show him at two years, wearing an ankle-length white dress, his head a profusion of ringlets. Not until age 6 or 7 was a distinction made in dress: frocks for girls, short pants – later trousers – for boys. Within the last fifty years, dress distinction was neutralised by the coming of rompers – a trouser suit, generally with bib and braces. Then, both girls and boys wore trousers – reverting to the gender neutrality of Roosevelt’s time, albeit in the opposite direction.

Event, General, Politics, Women's History

Having To ‘Go’ – ‘Halting Stations’ for Women

WHN / April 7, 2012

The Victorian era spawned not only demonstrations and demands for women’s right to vote, but a massive struggle for women’s loos to be included in the building programme erecting men’s facilities throughout London, under- and overground. Yet to speak of this was akin, almost, to lese majesty. Just as Victoria Sax-Coburg-Gotha ‘was not amused’ at so much, it may be presumed she’d have been little amused at a contention that public conveniences should be built to accommodate women.

Biography, Politics, Women's History

Jessie Street, Carrie Chapman Catt & Women’s Movement Internationalism

WHN / April 7, 2012

Fifty years after women meet at Seneca Falls, and almost fifty before debates about the content of the Women’s Charter, Life and Labor carries articles from women taking an internationalist view of the labour movement and women’s industrial struggle. Australians are contributors and even more closely associated with the journal. When in January 1906 she moves from Melbourne to Chicago, as first editor Henry brings with her journalistic expertise and respect gained in Australia. She brings along, too, her Women’s Movement activism and the support of confederates and mentors, Catherine Helen Spence amongst them. She carries letters of introduction from Spence to Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams and Anna Garlin Spencer amongst others. She knows from direct experience, working internationally in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, that the movement for women’s rights necessarily crosses national boundaries.

Biography, Event, Politics, Women's History

“You are supposed to be educated”

WHN / March 12, 2012

Hertha Ayerton’s experiences – the struggle against poverty and family responsibility, the limitations on her education, and the blocks to her career development – were shared by other WSPU women. Florence Macauley was forced to leave Somerville College, Oxford when her father died because she could not live on her scholarship. Emily Wilding Davison gave up her studies at Holloway College when her father died and the money ran out. Teresa Billington-Greig had to leave school at thirteen to work. She later trained as a teacher, taking her BA through extension studies.