Showing papers in "Womens History Review in 1997"

Women, citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish free state, 1922-1948

Abstract: This article explores the ways in which Catholic social teaching influenced and shaped the changing definitions of women's citizenship during the formative years of the Irish Free State. The 1922 Irish Free State Constitution guaranteed equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens. By 1937 this guarantee of equal citizenship for women had been transformed into a more gender based definition. Citizenship for women was now clearly defined in terms of their role as wives and mothers. The essay examines the relationship between Catholic social teaching and State legislation which resulted in such a narrow interpretation of women's role. The article also considers the opinions and activities of women's societies who campaigned for women's citizenship rights during these years. It is argued that despite the prevalence of Catholic social teaching, women did assert their citizenship rights and in doing so reclaimed their right to equal citizenship.

The awakened instinct: vegetarianism and the women's suffrage movement in Britain

Abstract: This article examines the extent to which vegetarianism was found in the militant and non-militant strands of the women's suffrage movement, and looks at some of the other movements contributing to vegetarian and suffrage thinking. The arguments linking the two movements are discussed, ranging from the psychological identification of women with animals as victims of male brutality, to the empowering idea that women confined to a homemaker's role could still help to create a new and more compassionate world by adopting a vegetarian diet. Vegetarianism and the women's movement are seen as linked with each other, and also with theosophy and socialism, as complementary ways of creating that longed-for new world.

Domesticating ‘the heart of the wild’: female personifications of the colonies, 1886-1940[1]

Abstract: British imperial propaganda has generally been perceived as a male arena which ignores the female presence in the empire story. This paper argues that women were central to empire imagery, particularly when they were used as symbols of the white colonies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Such female personifications represented a wide range of meaning, and depending on how they were interpreted and by whom, became ideal images for attracting both male and female emigrants. An examination of such images additionally reflects the growing national prominence of women as they evolved into imperial agents for preventing racial and moral decline.

‘Pleasurable homes’? victorian model miners' wives and the family wage in a south yorkshire colliery district [1]

Abstract: This article challenges the notion that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, mining households were characterised by the family wage and the male breadwinner. Through a close reading of sources drawn from the South Yorkshire oalfield considerable evidence is unearthed which suggests that miners' wives and their daughters often played an important role as wage earners. Female members of mining families usually earned money within the privacy of the domestic sphere. In public at least this allowed the affirmation of the family wage and the male breadwinner as the economic modus operandi within the mining household.

Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain

Abstract: While scholars have emphasised the positioning of women as wives and mothers in working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England, their position in the workforce remained significant, even in such disparate industries as cotton and chain-making. In the former, while excluded from spinning, women's employment in powerloom weaving brought them into the heart of the production process, encouraging their participation in workplace struggles and ultimately influencing a transformation in the working-class family in terms of fertility control. In chain-making, while some male workers attempted to position women in the domestic sphere, others were dependent on their labour. Cultural constructions of gender were thus undermined, as the struggle for the minimum wage superseded attempts to remove women from the workforce. In neither industry was equality between men and women realised, while antagonism on the basis of gender persisted. Yet women's identification with their work remained evident whi...

“abandoned women and bad characters”: prostitution in nineteenth-century Ireland

Abstract: This article examines the extent of prostitution in nineteenth-century Ireland. It centres on the problem of prostitution as one of visibility and the prostitute as a site of possible contagion, both physical and moral. The legal powers given to the police to control prostitution were used when prostitution became a particular problem and the focus of public and clerical condemnation. However, for the public prostitution was most acceptable when it was hidden from public view. Attempts to rescue and reform prostitutes came from lay and religious women in particular. The establishment of Magdalen Asylums offered the Irish public a place of confinement for their ‘wayward’ daughters, placing them away from the public gaze. Examining the registers of these asylums reveals that ‘fallen women’ were capable of using these institutions for their own ends, particularly in the nineteenth century. The decline in prostitution evident in Ireland from the 1870s owned much to the new ‘morality’ being imposed on...

“I have never met the normal woman”: Stella Browne and the politics of womanhood

Abstract: F. W. Stella Browne (1880–1995) and her views on female sexuality have been much discussed of recent years. These discussions have tended to rely on a limited number of her copious (if often hard-to-find) writings, and have also failed to take into account where Stella, as an individual woman, was coming from. In the light of ongoing researches into her life and career, this article locates her writings in her life of activism in a wide variety of causes. It argues that her opinions about women's needs do not conform to a simplistic model of a ‘New’ feminism of difference, and that her relationship to the thought of contemporary male sexologists has been presented in a one-dimensional and misleading way. Her tripartite commitment to feminism, socialism, and individualism is illustrated, drawing on a wide range of her writings and statements between 1912 and 1937. In her crusade to celebrate and liberate the “variety and variability of women” Stella sought constantly to overthrow concepts of a mon...

Women of the english nobility and gentry, 1066-1500

Abstract: Acheson, E., A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c. 1422-c. 1485, Cambridge, 1992. Adams, N. and C. Donahue, Jun., eds, Select Cases from the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury, c. 1200-1301, Selden Society, CXV, 1978-79. Alexander, J. and P. Binski, eds, Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England, 12001400, London, 1987. Altschul, M., A Baronial Family in Medieval England: the Clares, 1217-1314, Baltimore, 1965. Amt, E., ed., Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, London, 1993. Archer, R. E., ‘Rich old ladies: the problem of late medieval dowagers’, in A. Pollard, ed., Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, Gloucester, 1984, pp. 15-35. Archer, R. E., ‘The estates and finances of Margaret of Brotherton, c. 1320-1399’, Historical Research, LX, 1987, pp. 264-80. Archer, R. E., ‘“How ladies ... who live on their manors ought to manage their households and estates”: women as landholders and administrators in the later Middle Ages’, in P. J. P. Goldberg, ed., Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society c. 1200-1500, Gloucester, 1992, chapter 6. Archer, R. E. and B. E. Ferme, ‘Testamentary procedure with special reference to the executrix’, in Medieval Women in Southern England, Reading Medieval Studies, XV, 1989, pp. 3-34. Armstrong, C. A. J., ‘The piety of Cicely, duchess of York: a study in late medieval culture’, in England, France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century, London, 1983, pp. 135-56. Aston, M., ‘“Caim’s castles”: poverty, politics and disendowment’, in Faith and Fire: Popular and Unpopular Religion 1350-1600, London, 1993, pp. 95-131. Backhouse, J., Books of Hours, British Library, London, 1985. Backhouse, J., The Luttrell Psalter, British Library, London, 1989. Barber, R. and J. Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge, 1989. Bell, S. G., ‘Medieval women book owners: arbiters of lay piety and ambassadors of culture’, in M. Erler and M. Kowaleski, eds, Women and Power in the Middle Ages, Athens, 1988, pp. 149-87. Blamires, A., ed., with K. Pratt and C. W. Marx, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts, Oxford, 1992. Boffey, J., ‘Women authors and women’s literacy in fourteenthand fifteenthcentury England’, in C. M. Meale, ed., Women and Literature in Britain, 11501500, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 159-82. Bourdillon, A. F. C., The Order of Minoresses in England, Manchester, 1926. Brewer, J. S. and R. Howlett, eds, Monumenta Franciscana, 2 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1858-82. Britnell, R. H., ‘Minor landlords in England and medieval agrarian capitalism’, Past and Present, no. 89, 1980, pp. 3-22. Brooke, C. N. L., The Medieval Idea of Marriage, Oxford, 1989. Brundage, J. A., Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, Chicago, 1987. Burgess, C., ‘Late medieval wills and pious convention: testamentary evidence reconsidered’, in M. Hicks, ed., Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, Gloucester, 1990, pp. 14-33. Carpenter, C., Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 14011499, Cambridge, 1992. Carpenter, D. A., ‘Was there a crisis of the knightly class in the thirteenth century? The Oxfordshire evidence’, English Historical Review, XCV, 1980, pp. 721-52. Catto, J., ‘Religion and the English nobility in the later fourteenth century’, in H. Lloyd-Jones, V. Pearl and B. Worden, eds, History and Imagination: Essays in honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper, London, 1981, pp. 43-55. Chibnall, M., ‘Women in Orderic Vitalis’, Haskins Society Journal, II, 1990, pp. 105-21. Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, London, 1979. Clarke, A., J. Caley, J. Bayley, F. Holbrooke and J. W. Clarke, eds, Rymer’s Foedera, 1066-1383, 4 vols, Record Commission, London, 1816-69. Cooke, K., ‘Donors and daughters: Shaftesbury abbey’s benefactors, endowments and nuns c. 1086-1130’, in M. Chibnall, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies XII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1989, Woodbridge, 1990, pp. 29-45. Coss, P. R., Lordship, Knighthood and Locality: A Study in English Society, c. 11801280, Past and Present Publications,Cambridge, 1991. Coss, P. R., ‘Sir Geoffrey de Langley and the crisis of the knightly class in thirteenth-century England’, Past and Present, no. 68, 1975, pp. 3-37. Coss, P. R., ‘Bastard feudalism revised’, Past and Present, no. 125, 1989, pp. 27-64. Crawford, A., ‘Victims of attainder: the Howard and de Vere women in the late fifteenth century’, in Medieval Women in Southern England, Reading Medieval Studies, XV, 1989, pp. 59-74. Crouch, D., William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 11471219, London, 1990. Crouch, D., The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000-1300, London, 1992. Cullum, P. H., ‘“And hir name was Charite”: charitable giving by and for women in late medieval Yorkshire’, in P. J. P. Goldberg, ed., Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society c. 1200-1500, Gloucester, 1992, chapter 7. Davies, R. R., ‘Baronial accounts, incomes and arrears in the later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, second series, XXI, 1968, pp. 211-29. Davis, N., ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols, Oxford, 1971-76. Denholm-Young, N., Seignorial Administration in England, Oxford, 1937. Denholm-Young, N., ‘The Yorkshire estates of Isabella de Fortibus’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, XXXI, 1934, pp. 388-420. Douglas, D. C., William the Conqueror, London, 1964. Douglas, D. C. and G. W. Greenaway, eds, English Historical Documents 1042-1189, London, 1953. Je nn ife r W ar d 9 78 15 26 11 28 97

The feminist challenge to socialist history

Abstract: This article argues that it is timely to revisit some of the debates between feminism and Marxism. While acknowledging the achievements of women's history, it is critical of attempts to ground feminist history in either patriarchy theory or post-structuralism. Developing from ideas about what constitutes a theory of history, it is argued that both patriarchy and post-structuralism cannot sustain a notion of historicity. The debate about protective legislation in nineteenth-century Britain is reviewed as an example of the divergence between Marxist and feminist interpretations. The article concludes with a defence of historical materialism as an explanatory framework in analysing women's oppression.

'Oddly Hybrid': childbearing and childrearing practices in colonial Penang, 1850-1875

Abstract: European society in the British colony of Penang was ethnically very mixed, which makes it interesting for a study of cultural interchange of child raising practices. Most women included in the European community were of Asian descent, from a variety of Asian backgrounds; women of European descent also came from a range of cultural backgrounds. In their child raising practices, they were involved in complex processes of cultural mixing – acculturation processes to which they contributed significantly. Although there was increasing medical intervention in child care during this period, practitioners in Penang achieved only a limited degree of influence over modes of child raising. The cultural agency of women in the colonial context is highlighted.

A discreet benevolence: female philanthropy and the catholic resurgence in eighteenth-century Ireland [1]

Abstract: The recovery of Irish Catholicism from the disruptions of the penal era coincided with a significant expansion in charitable activity by women of all religious denominations. Common features of this philanthropy included its concentration on poor women and children, and the mixture of social concern and religious zeal which motivated it. In their work, however, Catholic women had to take into account both the provisions of the anti-Catholic legislation, and the distrust of elements in their own community. On the other hand, the weakness of ecclesiastical structures allowed laywomen some degree of freedom in the foundation and management of their projects. With the re-establishment of hierarchical authority, that autonomy was sharply diminished. Ultimately, like their co-religionists in Counter-Reformation Europe, charitable women felt obliged to accept the restrictions inherent in membership of a religious congregation, thereby setting the pattern for the Catholic female philanthropy of the next ...

Ishimoto Shizue: The Margaret Sanger of Japan

Abstract: Post-1945 Japan is known for its remarkably low birth rate and a heavy reliance on abortion for birth control purposes. What may be less well known is the extensive use of contraceptive methods as well to limit or regulate births and the role played by the prewar birth control movement in making the concept of birth control socially acceptable. The prewar movement owed its origins and much of its success in changing attitudes toward birth control to the efforts of an individual feminist – Ishimoto Shizue. Ishimoto, in turn, owed much support and guidance to the American birth control leader, Margaret Sanger. A study of Ishimoto and the prewar Japanese birth control movement highlights the importance of international cross-currents in feminist thought and practice, for Ishimoto's meeting of the dynamic and controversial American leader focused her energies on birth control as a means to bring about women's liberation in Japan. Ishimoto's relationship with Sanger continued and grew throughout the f...

Foster mothers in contemporary America: objectification, commodification, sexualization

Abstract: This article presents a discussion of the sociocultural implications of contemporary women's magazine stories and daily newspaper articles which deal with the subject of fostering within the USA. Contemporary media themes regarding foster mothers are historically contextualized within nineteenth-century economic shifts. These shifts contributed to sacralizing white, middle-class women and children and contributed to sentimentalizing their role in nuclear families. Consistent with a Victorian construction of women's and children's roles, duties, and personality characteristics, contemporary foster mothers and the children they care for are portrayed within the media as idealized cultural archetypes. The knowledge that is produced through the portrayal of foster mothers in the media represents a form of internal cultural colonialism that objectifies women and robs them of their humanity.

Gender, class and power: ideologies and conflict during the transition to trained female nursing at two New Zealand hospitals, 1889-95

Abstract: This paper examines the conflicts which surrounded the transition to trained female nursing in two New Zealand hospitals, Christchurch and Dunedin, in the late 1880s and early 1890s. It focuses on the ideological debates of the period which shaped the reformation of nursing within the colony in ways which differed from elsewhere. Arguments over gender and social class within nursing marked the transition period but were ultimately less important in defining nurses' future status than the role played by doctors. Trained female nursing became emeshed in a power struggle within hospitals from which doctors emerged victorious. Doctors were therefore able to dictate the role and functions of the new workforce and thus maintain their own supremacy within the hospital hierarchy.

Containment and control: presbyterian women and the missionary impulse in New South Wales, 1891-1914

Abstract: This paper focuses on attempts by middle-class, conservative women to maintain control over their sphere of public action. The women had organised in order to support Presbyterian women missionaries. Presbyterian women in the state of New South Wales, Australia, like other church women throughout the world, eagerly supported their mission sisters. The experiences of these women reveal the means by which women were contained and controlled. Both women missionaries and their supporters believed in a conservative, Christian, domestic ideology. However, single women missionaries were able to use that ideology as a means of personal escape from its confines. For their supporters at home, women missionaries came to represent an exciting and purposeful lifestyle. The support the Presbyterian women offered to missionaries can be recounted, in its own terms, as a celebratory narrative. An alternative reading is that the women's very success doomed their efforts at independent, sisterly support of women mi...

The religious context of the women's suffrage campaign in Ireland

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between the various Irish women's suffrage societies and the Christian churches. It looks at the attitudes of particular suffragists, organised groups and the clergy to the questions of not only granting women the vote but wider feminist issues as well. It argues that neither the women nor the clergy were predictable. There were suffragists who were anti-church and there were suffragists who formed organisations which closely reflected their religious affiliations. Some members of the clergy spoke out against the cause, but there were also a number who gave it their backing, though not always for feminist reasons.