The Women’s Royal Naval Service, a history of female military exclusion and inclusion Dr Hannah Roberts For the past seven years I have been writing my PhD part-time alongside a full-time teaching career. The thesis covers the history of the Women’s Royal…
Tag: WW2
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – A History of Equal Pay
Lilly Ledbetter’s eight year battle started with a little note she found in the women’s bathroom at work. The note ranked her salary alongside the much higher salaries of three male tire-room managers, and Ledbetter was shocked to see that her male peers were making $14,000 and more per year than she was. “I’d worried about being paid less than the men who were doing the same work I was,” Ledbetter records in her memoir, but she never had evidence to prove her suspicions (5). Armed with this alarming new information, Ledbetter took action and sued Goodyear for pay discrimination.
Women of True Grit – Scottish Women’s Hospitals
It was during a visit to Belgrade, Serbia that I was first made aware of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and the work they did during the First World War. What saddened me was that the women involved are known about…
The Women ‘who never cry’: British Women Released by Germany
The women were more fortunate than the 150 white men, who were taken back to Prisoner of War camps in Germany. And that privileging of women was a common pattern in WW2 .
After that Betsy and Geraldine’s group endured two weeks of what one newspaper described as ‘a rollicking Robinson Crusoe adventure’ on Emirau (‘Squally’) Island. It was not.
Then on Christmas Day an Australian naval initiative rescued them and took them safely to the Antipodes.
The Geo-Politics of War and Woman-Terror in Congo
Rape and sexual torture have featured prominently in the Congo’s killing fields. Occurring on a daily basis, militia strategically turn the bodies of females of all ages, some infants, others elderly, into battle grounds. They do this by penetrating and mutilating their victim’s genitals to impart maximum physical and psychological damage. The damage to victims, and also to their families and communities, is not only horrific. It is immeasurable. It happens alongside kidnapping which, while targeting young men as military recruits, also targets girls and women for sex slavery. Often, women and girls are held captive for months or, in some instances, for several years.
Barbara Pym: A Quiet Social Historian
Barbara Pym’s novels provide a social history of the period over which she wrote from the 1920s to 1980. ‘Young Men in Fancy Dress’, written when she was sixteen, inspired by the 1920s, is unpublished. Unlike the novels that follow…
(Some) Women’s History OnLine …
… there can be little doubt that at this time, despite not infrequent denials of ‘knowledge’ the world was well aware of the genocidal ideology and practices upon which Adolf Hitler’s regime was founded:
‘Still going on as pitilessly as brutally as it did five years ago is Goebbels’ persecution of the Jews. Signposts at city limits bear the legend, “Jews not wanted, Jews keep out.” Even in parks, if Jews are allowed at all, special yellow benches are set apart, labelled, “For Jews.”’
Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is quoted: ‘All propaganda must be confined to a few slogans … repeated over and over … until the last man [sic] understands what they mean.’
Jessie Kenney and women seafarers
Jessie battled on but to no avail. ‘These gentlemen … had dark and impenetrable notions on the subject.’ Instead she ‘decided to go to sea as a stewardess in the hopes that later I may be allowed to practice as a wireless operator.’
(Victoria Drummond had similarly been advised to give up and become a stewardess, but refused.)
By autumn 1926, Jessie was working on the Otranto – as a stewardess. She sailed for ten years with Furness and Orient line, and kept her dream fed by reading science and philosophy books when she could, as the lists in her diaries show.
But ‘How often I looked up at the wireless cabin … afterwards. How I had longed for the peace and solitude of the wireless cabin where after my labours I could study in peace.’ She wasn’t even accepted in WW2.
From the Bush, to Sales, to the Airforce – Reflections on the Beginnings of a 20th Century Life
… As a junior, I didn’t serve any customers for almost 12 months, because that was the seniors’ job. Juniors weren’t allowed to speak to a customer. We had to run the messages and tidy up … The seniors at Farmers were trained in what we’d now call customer relations. The juniors were trained too. When I first went there, even though it was only for three weeks, for a sale, I had two days training before beginning in the department. I was paid to be taught where the items were in the store, how to write out dockets, how to speak to people …