Recently The Women’s Library hosted the annual Fawcett Lecture, presented by Sandi Toksvig. Following Sandi’s enlightening and suitably humorous take on the topic of Post-Feminism, the floor was opened to questions from the audience. One of the last of these…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Women’s History Month: The Woman who invented Welsh national dress
Pencil drawing of Augusta Hall, courtesy the Lady Llanover Society, www.ladyllanover.org.uk The Welsh woman in her flannel petticoat, dress, apron, shawl and tall black hat is a popular stereotype found on everything from maps, books and postcards to boxes of…
Women’s History Month: Pandita Ramabai
On 11 March 1889 the Indian activist known as Pandita Ramabai opened her Sharada Sadan (or Home for Learning) in Chowpatty, an area of Mumbai (which was then, under the British Raj, known as Bombay). She designed this institution to…
Women’s History Month: 100 Years of International Women’s Day
Glasgow Women’s Library holds archival material documenting the celebration of International Women’s Day. Here are just a couple of examples picked from our collections: In 1975 International Women’s Day was given official recognition by the United Nations. This edition of…
Women’s History Month: from the TUC Library Collections
Boatwomen Training Scheme, 1943. In 1941, Frances Marian ‘Molly’ Traill approached the Ministry of War Transport with a scheme to train women boat crews to help the country with its shortage of manpower on the canals. The Ministry was impressed…
Women’s History Month: International Women’s Day!
Today, we celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day (IWD), so it seems appropriate to provide some historical context. International Women’s Day has its origins amongst the socialist and communist parties campaigning for rights for the working-class at the beginning…
Women’s History Month: ‘Red Ellen’, Ellen Wilkinson, 1891 – 1947
Ellen Wilkinson was a key radical figure in British socialism and feminism of the early and mid-20th century, a woman of idealism, pragmatism, energy and passion who was involved in many of the major struggles of the period. Born in…
Women’s History Month: S. Margery Fry (1874-1958) ‘Women Champion of the Underdog’
Margery Fry was born on 11th March 1874 into a prominent and well-connected Quaker family. She was the eighth child of Edward and Mariabella Fry, whose family was later completed by the birth of Margery’s younger sister, Ruth. Margery’s father…
Women’s History Month: Caroline Herschel
On 5 March 1777 Caroline Herschel made her first appearance as a professional singer (her brother William conducting), at the Upper Assembly Rooms at Bath in Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus.This information comes from Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles…