Gillian Murphy Women, Peace and Equality – new LSE Library exhibition 9 January to 9 April 2016 Open to all The Library’s spring exhibition draws on its iconic collections to explore the theme of women, war and peace to coincide…
Tag: Women’s History
‘CEO of the Netherlands’: Performing Gender at the Dutch Court c. 1980 – 1999
Harry J. Mace presented the paper ‘CEO of the Netherlands’: Performing Gender at the Dutch Court c. 1980 – 1999 at the 2015 Women’s history Network Conference held at the University of Kent. Harry is an undergraduate international, political and gender historian…
WALKING WITH WOMEN – Aberdeen’s Women’s Trail …
As more than one woman is connected to some stops, twenty one women are included. These women’s lives span over four hundred years, although the majority died in the twentieth century. Within the Trail it became apparent that there were themes, such as health and civic life. At the site of the former Children’s Hospital (stop Four) four women are commemorated: Clementina Esslemont who founded the Aberdeen Mother and Child Welfare Association in 1909, Fenella Paton who founded the first birth control clinic in Aberdeen in 1926, Dr Agnes Thompson who pioneered services to children and Dr Mary Esslemont (Clementina’s daughter) who worked, inter alia, as a gynaecologist at the hospital. Pioneering speech therapist Catherine Hollingsworth’s story is told at stop Six. At the site of the former General Dispensary (stop Eleven), Maggie Myles, author of a Textbook for Midwives, which has been in print continuously since 1953, is commemorated.
A Century of Feminist Foreign Policy – Looking Back for Help Today
Since WILPF’s inception, the world has experienced 224 wars. During that same timeframe, women won two important struggles for human rights. The first, of course, was the right to vote in 1920; the second, the right to reproductive freedom in 1972. Jacobs, and the group that formed out of the Hague conference insisted then, and we insist now, on a third human right —the right to be at the peace table; to be part of the decisions to make war or keep the peace. Fewer than one in 40 of the signatories of major peace agreements since 1992 have been female, according to the UN development fund for women. This needs to change.
Today, there are 50 ongoing violent conflicts resulting in 50 million refugees around the world, and untold death and destruction. The international trade of lemons and toothbrushes is regulated, but not guns and other weapons. Would the adoption of more feminist foreign policy and an increase in women’s participation in peace negotiations put an end to arms and conflict? Probably not. But the point is not to end conflict, but to resolve it without recourse to military violence. The world is missing a powerful opportunity for creating sustainable peace when it turns to military solutions and restricts the participants at peace negotiations to the men with guns.
Reclaiming Herstory – Affirming & Celebrating Women’s History Sites
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.
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 …
Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War & Conflict – Part 2
Poppies at the Tower – Remembering World War I Photography: Robin R. Joyce Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict Women’s History Network Annual Conference, 2014 Introduction ‘Revisiting Home Fronts: Gender, War & Conflict’ was the title and theme of…
The First 40 Years – The Working Women’s Charter
Elections are often won and lost on women’s swing votes … What better time to start a serious debate on the things that matter to women – and to working women in particular? Of course, this debate is already taking place across the country in organisations from Mumsnet to the 30 Per Cent Group, and from the Fawcett Society to many employers. Just this week, Asda finds itself forced to into the debate via a legal challenge from thousands of its women employees embarking on a new battle for equal pay and recognition. And in Newham, the women activists of Focus E15 may have ended their occupation of empty flats but their battle for basic housing continues.A new Working Women’s Charter could transform these debates – not because a new list of new demands will change anything on its own but because it could harness the energy and promise of growing ‘third wave feminism’ …
Vale Leonore Davidoff (1932-2014)
She dedicated almost a decade to the meticulous research and writing that culminated in her final book Thicker than Water: Siblings and their Relations, 1780-1920, published by Oxford late in 2012 just before her 80th birthday. This pioneering study is yet to receive its full recognition. Leonore demonstrates the significance of sibling relationships and their key role in the extensive family networks that provided the capital, personnel, skills and contracts crucial to the rapidly expanding commercial and professional enterprises of the era, and how these changed as families became smaller from the end of the 19th century. Through studies of particular families (including the Freuds, Gladstones, Wedgwoods and Darwins), she explored sibling intimacy and incest, and some famous brother-sister relationships.