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CHAPTER I

THE HISTORY OF WOMENS MOVEMENT

The writing of women's history has always been closely linked with contemporary feminist
politics as well as with changes in the discipline of history itself. When women sought to
question inequalities in their own lives they turned to history to understand the roots of their
oppression and to see what they could learn from challenges that had been made in the past. If a
woman's role could be shown to be socially constructed within a specific historical context,
rather than natural and universal, then feminists could argue that it was open to change.
Activists within the first organised women's movement of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries found that women were largely absent from standard history texts and this inspired
them to write their own histories.
Suffrage campaigners were also anxious that the achievement of the vote, and women's
part in gaining this victory, should not become lost from view and therefore they took an active
part in constructing a narrative of the campaign that would have a long-lasting influence on
subsequent generations of historians. The Suffragette Fellowship and the Library of the London
Society for Women's Service (successor of the London women's suffrage organisation led by
Millicent Fawcett) were established in the 1920s to collect source material about the militant and
constitutional sides of the movement respectively, while many campaigners produced
autobiographies about the suffrage years. Ray Strachey and Sylvia Pankhurst, both participants
in the suffrage campaign, wrote histories of the movement that are now considered classic texts.(
With the fragmentation of the women's movement after the First World War, however,
these pioneering histories tended to be lost from view. Women's history continued to be written
there was a renewed interest, for example, in the history of women's suffrage during the 1950s
and early 60s but these studies had little influence on the writing of history more generally or
on the academic curriculum.
It was the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), or 'second wave feminism', from the
late 1960s that would have the greatest impact on the writing of women's history. Political
activists again pointed to the lack of references to women in standard texts and sought to re-
discover women's active role in the past. Sheila Rowbotham produced a pioneering study,
Hidden From history, that was followed by detailed investigations into varied aspects of women's
lives, including employment, trade unionism, women's organisations, family life and sexuality.
A context was provided by developments in social history and the social sciences that
sought to recover the history of less powerful groups 'history from below' and challenged
conventional wisdoms about what should be seen as historically significant.
Feminists made a distinctive contribution to these developments by highlighting women's
specific experiences in institutions such as the family, drawing attention to the significance of
sexual divisions in the workplace and in the home and exploring the interconnections between
public and private life. By looking at history through women's eyes they questioned familiar
chronologies and notions of time and argued that family concerns, emotional support and
personal relationships were just as important as waged work and politics. In doing so they went
beyond putting women back into a familiar framework and began to reconfigure the way in
which history in the broadest sense was written.
Women's history and feminist history are often used interchangeably but this serves to
play down the specific approach of feminist historians. Feminists argue that the power
relationship between men and women is just as important as that between social classes in
understanding social change, and that a recognition of conflicts between men and women leads
to a re-interpretation of standard accounts of social movements and ideas, as well as opening up
new areas of enquiry. Thus, Barbara Taylor's study of women's involvement in Owenite
Socialism provided a new lens through which to understand the aims and ideas of that
movement. Although women are usually the subject of feminist history that is not invariably the
case, since a feminist approach can be used to understand all areas of history. For example,
Sonya Rose and Wendy Webster have brought feminist insights to the study of national identity,
race and citizenship during the Second World War and the post-war years.
The writing of women's history flourished in the 1970s and 80s, in particular in the
United States and Britain, although there were differences of emphasis and approach that
mirrored divisions within the contemporary women's movement, in particular between radical
and socialist feminists. In the United States research concentrated on a separate women's culture,
the growth of all-female institutions, the family and sexuality.
In Britain, where labour history was much stronger and many feminists had come out of
a socialist politics, the emphasis was on waged work, trade union organisation and labour
politics.
In trying to make sense of women's specific experiences socialist historians explored the
complex relationship between Marxism and feminism and introduced the concept of patriarchy
to help make sense of the fact that 'women have not only worked for capital, they have worked
for men'. The boundaries between the different approaches did, however, become more fluid over
time for example Sally Alexander's study of working-class movements in the early 19th
century examined how the unconscious entered politics and how the understanding of self and
sexual identity would change our understanding of class.
Within the women's movement there was growing criticism about the predominance of
white, western heterosexual women and their concerns and this affected the writing of women's
history. Greater attention was paid to the differences between women, including race, ethnicity,
class and sexual orientation. Lesbian historians sought to rescue their history from invisibility
and drew attention to the ways in which men's control over women's bodies underpins patriarchy.
In the Spinster and her Enemies, for instance, Sheila Jeffreys argued that the social construction
of heterosexuality in the late 19th century helped to maintain male power.
Despite the growth of research into women's history mainstream history texts and
educational courses often ignored women's experiences and there was a tendency to view
women's history as separate from other developments. In the 1990s, therefore, Jane Rendall and
others called for a new gender history that would apply the themes raised by women's history to
both sexes and would focus on the varied ways in which gender differences across time and
place have been constructed and understood. In its first editorial, Gender and History claimed
that the journal's intentions were to study male institutions as well as those defined as female and
to address men and masculinity as well as women and femininity.
Postmodernism has also influenced the theory and practice of gender and women's
history. The emphasis on language and discourse has challenged old feminist certainties about
lived experience, the nature of women's subordination and the use of the category woman. There
has been a shift away from an interest in the material conditions of women's lives towards a
concern with representation, symbolism, discourse and the text. The 'new cultural history',
however, has proved to be contentious.
Mary Maynard has argued that lived experience is mediated not just through discourse
and the text but also through material structures and relationships.
Nonetheless, it has opened up new areas of enquiry such as the female body, the emotions
and the construction of historical memory as well as drawing attention to the shifting, multiple
and often conflicting ways in which women develop gendered identities.
Although gender history has increased in popularity, research into women's history
continues to thrive. In contrast to the period of 'first wave feminism' the study of women's history
did not become lost once the WLM began to lose momentum. The expansion of higher education
opened up more jobs for women academics who were able to influence the curriculum and to
introduce women's history courses. Publishing outlets increased with the development of a
women's press, notably Virago and Honno, and new journals, including the Journal of Women's
History, Gender and History and the Women's History Review.

Various groups have been formed to give women's history a voice, to promote the study of
women's history and to maintain links with contemporary feminist activists. In 1991 leading
women historians came together to launch the Women's History Network (WHN). The WHN
encourages contact between all people with an interest in women's history, whatever their
background or qualifications, and aims to promote research into all areas of women's history. Its
annual conference provides a space for sharing recent developments in the field and for meeting
other researchers.
The International Federation for Research in Women's History (IFRWH), established in
1987, has similar aims and encourages co-operation across national boundaries. The retrieval of
sources has also been crucial in ensuring the continuing growth of women's history.
The Women's Library, part of London Metropolitan University, plays a pivotal role here
as well as providing an internationally renowned resource, it also promotes women's history
through varied events and seeks to inspire debate in the area. Regional archives, including the
Feminist Archive (North and South) and Women's Archive of Wales have also played a key part
in rescuing sources and promoting the study of women's history.
Women's history is now far more embedded in the curriculum in higher education than
half a century ago, the number of professors in women's history has increased and there are far
more publishing outlets.
On the other hand women's studies courses both at undergraduate and at postgraduate
level have declined over the same period and many mainstream history texts still give little space
to women and their specific experiences. In this context it remains important to promote research
into women's history both inside the academy and in the wider community. The close
relationship between contemporary feminist politics and historical practice means that women's
history is still able to excite enthusiasm and is constantly changing, developing new areas to
research and new concepts and approaches with which to analyse them.

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