Women in Europe since 1750 (Routledge Library Editions: Womens History)

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The British feminist movement has often been studied, but so far nobody has written about its opponents. Edited by Lindsey Charles , Lorna Duffin. This book surveys women and work in English society before its transition to industrial capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This unusual book traces the development of the feminist movement in America and, to a lesser extent, in England. The comparison between the movements is enlightening.

History of women in the United Kingdom

Over the decades from to abortion was transformed from an important female-centred form of fertility control into a medical event, closely monitored by the State. This transition, the author argues here, took place against a background of debate over fertility control and its implications…. Edited by Valerie Fildes. By Edmond de Goncourt , Jules de Goncourt.

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Through discussion of evidence from paintings and memoirs, the book draws an intimate lifelike account of what lay…. This book examines the marriages of British peers to American women within the context of the opening up of London and New York society and the growing competitiveness for high social status. In London, American women were often blamed for the growing hedonism and materialism of smart society and…. Covering the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the outbreak of the First World War, this entertaining account describes the lives of women in all classes of society: By International Conference on Women's History.

This lively collection of essays, originally published in , illustrated recent developments in the area, with chapters by contributors from many different countries and disciplines. Asking new questions and using sources in a challenging way, the contributors reflect s debates about…. In dealing with the common experience of women in modern society, this book provides a deeper insight into European women at work, at home, at leisure and in their political and educational functions.

Particular emphasis is placed upon the significant cultural differences between women of various…. This perceptive book studies the Victorian woman in the home and in the family. One of the central purposes is to rescue Victorian woman from the realm of myth where her life was spent in frivolous trifles and instead to show how she had a major part to play in the practical management of the home.

Having already published a bibliography on Annie Besant, Theodore Besterman in this book continued with the story of her life. She was a prominent British Theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator who lived between and Originally published in , this work is fascinating….

By Gail Braybon , Penny Summerfield. Originally published in , Out of the Cage brings vividly to life the experiences of working women from all social groups in the two World Wars. Telling a fascinating story, the authors emphasise what the women themselves have had to say, in diaries, memoirs, letters and recorded interviews…. Topics include women in the World Wars, prostitution in Victorian….

Hardback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions: Give Us Bread but Give Us Roses Working Women's Consciousness in the United States, to the First World War, 1st Edition By Sarah Eisenstein Rooted in the printed sources of the period, this book reconstructs the attitudes of a pioneer generation of young women to the conflicts brought about by their new experience of employment outside their homes, and to changes in work and family relationships. Death Comes to the Maiden Sex and Execution , 1st Edition By Camille Naish In , the French femme de lettres Olympe de Gouges wrote that 'as women have the right to take their places on the scaffold, they must also have the right to take their seats in government'.

This book explores the issues of female emancipation through the history of female execution, from the… Paperback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions: Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England 1st Edition By Carol Dyhouse Girls learn about "femininity" from childhood onwards, first through their relationships in the family, and later from their teachers and peers. The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal 1st Edition By Deborah Gorham In Victorian England, the perception of girlhood arose not in isolation, but as one manifestation of the prevailing conception of femininity.

Examining the assumptions that underlay the education and upbringing of middle-class girls, this book is also a study of the learning of gender roles in… Paperback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions: Thomis , Jennifer Grimmett There is still much uncertainty about the role of nineteenth-century British women in social and political protest. It is well known that women participated in food riots… Paperback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions: Evans Originally published in , this book brings together what is known about liberal feminist and socialist movements for the emancipation of women all over the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Leninism, Stalinism, and the Women's Movement in Britain, 1st Edition By Sue Bruley This book offers a detailed examination of the interaction between socialism and feminism through the lens of one particular socialist organisation, the Communist Party of Great Britain, from its foundation in until the outbreak of the Second World War. Originally publishing in , it is an important contribution to the… Paperback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions: Eighteenth-century Women An Anthology, 1st Edition By Bridget Hill When it was first published in , this book filled an acknowledged gap in the social history of the period and made available hitherto inaccessible sources.

There were, and are, many different styles and types of corsets, varying depending on the intended use, corset maker's style, and the fashions of the era. The social status of women in the Victoria Era is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the nation's power and richness and what many consider its appalling social conditions.

Victorian morality was full of contradictions.

A plethora of social movements concerned with improving public morals co-existed with a class system that permitted and imposed harsh living conditions for many, such as women. In this period, an outward appearance of dignity and restraint was valued, but the usual "vices" continued, such as prostitution. In the Victorian era, the bathing machine was developed and flourished. It was a device to allow people to wade in the ocean at beaches without violating Victorian notions of modesty about having "limbs" revealed. The bathing machine was part of sea-bathing etiquette that was more rigorously enforced upon women than men.

The Roaring Twenties is a term for society and culture in the s in the Western world. It was a period of sustained economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, particularly in major cities. Women's suffrage came about in many major countries in the s, including United States, Canada, Great Britain. This influenced many governments and elections by increasing the number of voters available.

Politicians responded by spending more attention on issues of concern to women, especially pacifism, public health, education, and the status of children. On the whole, women voted much like their menfolk, except they were more pacifistic. The s marked a revolution in fashion. The new woman danced, drank, smoked and voted. She cut her hair short, wore make-up and partied.

Sometimes she smoked a cigarette. She was known for being giddy and taking risks; she was a flapper. With their desire for freedom and independence came as well change in fashion, welcoming a more comfortable style, where the waistline was just above the hips and loosen, and staying away from the Victorian style with a corset and tight waistline. With widespread unemployment among men, poverty, and the need to help family members who are in even worse condition, The pressures were heavy on women during the Great Depression across the modern world.

A primary role was as a housewife. Without a steady flow of family income, their work became much harder in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. The birthrates fell everywhere, as children were postponed until families could financially support them. Among the few women in the labor force, layoffs were less common in the white-collar jobs and they were typically found in light manufacturing work. However, there was a widespread demand to limit families to one paid job, so that wives might lose employment if their husband was employed.

In rural and small-town areas, women expanded their operation of vegetable gardens to include as much food production as possible. In the United States, agricultural organizations sponsored programs to teach housewives how to optimize their gardens and to raise poultry for meat and eggs. Quilts were created for practical use from various inexpensive materials and increased social interaction for women and promoted camaraderie and personal fulfillment.

Oral history provides evidence for how housewives in a modern industrial city handled shortages of money and resources. Often they updated strategies their mothers used when they were growing up in poor families. Cheap foods were used, such as soups, beans and noodles. They purchased the cheapest cuts of meat—sometimes even horse meat—and recycled the Sunday roast into sandwiches and soups. They sewed and patched clothing, traded with their neighbors for outgrown items, and made do with colder homes. New furniture and appliances were postponed until better days. Many women also worked outside the home, or took boarders, did laundry for trade or cash, and did sewing for neighbors in exchange for something they could offer.

Extended families used mutual aid—extra food, spare rooms, repair-work, cash loans—to help cousins and in-laws. In Japan, official government policy was deflationary and the opposite of Keynesian spending. Consequently, the government launched a nationwide campaign to induce households to reduce their consumption, focusing attention on spending by housewives. In Germany, the government tried to reshape private household consumption under the Four-Year Plan of to achieve German economic self-sufficiency.

The Nazi women's organizations, other propaganda agencies and the authorities all attempted to shape such consumption as economic self-sufficiency was needed to prepare for and to sustain the coming war. Using traditional values of thrift and healthy living, the organizations, propaganda agencies and authorities employed slogans that called up traditional values of thrift and healthy living.

However, these efforts were only partly successful in changing the behavior of housewives. The Hindu , Jewish , Sikh , Islamic and Christian views about women have varied throughout the last two millennia, evolving along with or counter to the societies in which people have lived. For much of history, the role of women in the life of the church, both local and universal, has been downplayed, overlooked, or simply denied. Warfare always engaged women as victims and objects of protection. The First World War has received the most coverage, with the newest trend being coverage of a wide range of gender issues.

During the twentieth century of total warfare the female half of the population played increasingly large roles as housewives, consumers, mothers, munitions workers, replacements for men in service, nurses, lovers, sex objects and emotional supporters. One result in many countries was women getting the right to vote, including the United States, Canada, Germany, and Russia, among others.

The following is a list of articles in Wikipedia and outside links where Wikipedia has no relevant articles which are either about women's history or containing relevant information, often in a "History" section. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Part of a series on Women in society Society. History of women in the United Kingdom. Women in the French Revolution. Women's suffrage in Australia , Feminism in Australia , [[: History of women in the United States. History of Canadian women and Feminism in Canada. Women in the workforce. Women as theological figures. Women and war , History of women in the military , and Women's roles in the World Wars. Women in the military by country , Women in combat , and Women in the military.

Women's suffrage Muslim countries US. First Second Third Fourth. Lists Articles Feminists by nationality Literature American feminist literature Feminist comic books. Major Problems in American Women's History. Europe" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 2.

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Offen, European feminisms, The Princeton History of Modern Ireland pp. Joeres and Mary Jo Maynes, German women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Journal of Military History April , Women in the Holocaust". Asia" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Australia and New Zealand" in Kelly Boyd, ed. A demographic history Auckland University Press, Tucker, "Problems in the historiography of women in the Middle East: Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring women to history Indiana UP, History 14 3, Eldredge, "Women in production: Africa" in Kelly Boyd, ed. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Autobiography as social critique.

A Retrospective from the United States," Signs: New Trajectories in U. In Paterson, Thomas G. The Ongoing Feminist Revolution , www. Lougee, "'Noblesse,' Domesticity, and Social Reform: Clark, Schooling the Daughters of Marianne: Reader's guide to women's studies pp. A History of the Global Economy. From to the Present. International encyclopedia of women's suffrage Abc-Clio Inc, World population and production: Women in Nazi Germany. The growth of governmental institutions under a succession of bishops reduced the role of queens and their households in formal government.

Married or widowed noblewomen remained significant cultural and religious patrons and played an important part in political and military events, even if chroniclers were uncertain if this was appropriate behaviour. As in earlier centuries, most women worked in agriculture, but here roles became more clearly gendered, with ploughing and managing the fields defined as men's work, for example, and dairy production becoming dominated by women.

In medieval times, women had responsibility for brewing and selling the ale that men all drank. By , men had taken over that role. The reasons include commercial growth, gild formation, changing technologies, new regulations, and widespread prejudices that associated female brewsters with drunkenness and disorder. The taverns still use women to serve it, a low-status, low-skilled, and poorly remunerated tasks.

While the Tudor era presents an abundance of material on the women of the nobility—especially royal wives and queens—historians have recovered scant documentation about the average lives of women. There has, however, been extensive statistical analysis of demographic and population data which includes women, especially in their childbearing roles.

The role of women in society was, for the historical era, relatively unconstrained; Spanish and Italian visitors to England commented regularly, and sometimes caustically, on the freedom that women enjoyed in England, in contrast to their home cultures. England had more well-educated upper class women than was common anywhere in Europe.

The Queen's marital status was a major political and diplomatic topic. It also entered into the popular culture. Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman. In contrast to her father's emphasis on masculinity and physical prowess, Elizabeth emphasized the maternalism theme, saying often that she was married to her kingdom and subjects. She explained "I keep the good will of all my husbands — my good people — for if they did not rest assured of some special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience," [15] and promised in they would never have a more natural mother than she.

Although medical men did not approve, women healers played a significant role in the medical care of Londoners from cradle to grave during the Elizabethan era. They were hired by parishes and hospitals, as well as by private families. They played central roles in the delivery of nursing care as well as medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical services throughout the city as part of organized systems of health care. They operated nursing homes for the homeless and sick poor, and also looked after abandoned and orphaned children, pregnant women, and lunatics.

After , the workhouse movement undermined many of these roles and the parish nurse became restricted largely to the rearing and nursing of children and infants. Over ninety percent of English women and adults, in general entered marriage in this era at an average age of about 25—26 years for the bride and 27—28 years for the groom.

They governed witchcraft and providing penalties for its practice, or—in —rather for pretending to practise it. In Wales, fear of witchcraft mounted around the year There was a growing alarm of women's magic as a weapon aimed against the state and church. The Church made greater efforts to enforce the canon law of marriage, especially in Wales where tradition allowed a wider range of sexual partnerships.

There was a political dimension as well, as accusations of witchcraft were levied against the enemies of Henry VII, who was exerting more and more control over Wales. The records of the Courts of Great Sessions for Wales, show that Welsh custom was more important than English law. Custom provided a framework of responding to witches and witchcraft in such a way that interpersonal and communal harmony was maintained, Showing to regard to the importance of honour, social place and cultural status.

Even when found guilty, execution did not occur. Becoming king in , James I brought to England and Scotland continental explanations of witchcraft. He set out the much stiffer Witchcraft Act of , which made it a felony under common law. One goal was to divert suspicion away from male homosociality among the elite, and focus fear on female communities and large gatherings of women.

He thought they threatened his political power so he laid the foundation for witchcraft and occultism policies, especially in Scotland. The point was that a widespread belief in the conspiracy of witches and a witches' Sabbath with the devil deprived women of political influence. Occult power was supposedly a womanly trait because women were weaker and more susceptible to the devil. Enlightenment attitudes after made a mockery of beliefs in witches.

The Witchcraft Act of marked a complete reversal in attitudes. Penalties for the practice of witchcraft as traditionally constituted, which by that time was considered by many influential figures to be an impossible crime, were replaced by penalties for the pretence of witchcraft. A person who claimed to have the power to call up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods, was to be punished as a vagrant and a con artist, subject to fines and imprisonment.

Historians Keith Thomas and his student Alan Macfarlane revolutionized the study of witchcraft by combining historical research with concepts drawn from anthropology. Older women were the favorite targets because they were marginal, dependent members of the community and therefore more likely to arouse feelings of both hostility and guilt, and less likely to have defenders of importance inside the community. Witchcraft accusations were the village's reaction to the breakdown of its internal community, coupled with the emergence of a newer set of values that was generating psychic stress. The Reformation closed the convents and monasteries, and called on former monks and nuns to marry.

Lay women shared in the religiosity of the Reformation. Historian Alasdair Raffe finds that, "Men and women were thought equally likely to be among the elect Godly men valued the prayers and conversation of their female co-religionists, and this reciprocity made for loving marriages and close friendships between men and women.

For the first time, laywomen gained numerous new religious roles, and took a prominent place in prayer societies. Women's historians have debated the impact of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism generally on the status of women. Clark argues that in 16th century England, women were engaged in many aspects of industry and agriculture. The home was a central unit of production and women played a vital role in running farms, and in operating some trades and landed estates. For example, they brewed beer, handled the milk and butter, raised chickens and pigs, grew vegetables and fruit, spun flax and wool into thread, sewed and patched clothing, and nursed the sick.

Their useful economic roles gave them a sort of equality with their husbands. However, Clark argues, as capitalism expanded in the 17th century, there was more and more division of labor with the husband taking paid labor jobs outside the home, and the wife reduced to unpaid household work.

Middle-class women were confined to an idle domestic existence, supervising servants; lower-class women were forced to take poorly paid jobs. Capitalism, therefore, had a negative effect on more powerful women. In the preindustrial era, production was mostly for home use and women produce much of the needs of the households.

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The second stage was the "family wage economy" of early industrialization, the entire family depended on the collective wages of its members, including husband, wife and older children. The third or modern stage is the "family consumer economy," in which the family is the site of consumption, and women are employed in large numbers in retail and clerical jobs to support rising standards of consumption.

In the Victorian era, fertility rates increased in every decade until , when the rates started evening out. Another possible explanation is social. In the 19th century, the marriage rate increased, and people were getting married at a very young age until the end of the century, when the average age of marriage started to increase again slowly. The reasons why people got married younger and more frequently are uncertain.

One theory is that greater prosperity allowed people to finance marriage and new households earlier than previously possible. With more births within marriage, it seems inevitable that marriage rates and birth rates would rise together. The evening out of fertility rates at the beginning of the 20th century was mainly the result of a few big changes: The Victorian era is famous for the Victorian standards of personal morality.

Historians generally agree that the middle classes held high personal moral standards and usually followed them , but have debated whether the working classes followed suit. Moralists in the late 19th century such as Henry Mayhew decried the slums for their supposed high levels of cohabitation without marriage and illegitimate births. By contrast in 21st century Britain, nearly half of all children are born outside marriage, and nine in ten newlyweds have been cohabitating. Historians have begun to analyze the agency of women in overseas missions. At first, missionary societies officially enrolled only men, but women increasingly insisted on playing a variety of roles.

Single women typically worked as educators. Wives assisted their missionary husbands in most of his roles. Advocates stopped short of calling for the end of specified gender roles, but they stressed the interconnectedness of the public and private spheres and spoke out against perceptions of women as weak and house-bound. The middle class typically had one or more servants to handle cooking, cleaning and child care, Industrialisation brought with it a rapidly growing middle class whose increase in numbers had a significant effect on the social strata itself: Identifiable characteristics came to define the middle class home and lifestyle.

Previously, in town and city, residential space was adjacent to or incorporated into the work site, virtually occupying the same geographical space. The difference between private life and commerce was a fluid one distinguished by an informal demarcation of function. In the Victorian era, English family life increasingly became compartmentalised, the home a self-contained structure housing a nuclear family extended according to need and circumstance to include blood relations.

The concept of "privacy" became a hallmark of the middle class life. The English home closed up and darkened over the decade s , the cult of domesticity matched by a cult of privacy. Bourgeois existence was a world of interior space, heavily curtained off and wary of intrusion, and opened only by invitation for viewing on occasions such as parties or teas. Domestic life for a working-class family meant the housewife had to handle the chores servants did in wealthier families.

A working-class wife was responsible for keeping her family as clean, warm, and dry as possible in housing stock that was often literally rotting around them. In London, overcrowding was endemic in the slums; a family living in one room was common. Domestic chores for women without servants meant a great deal of washing and cleaning. Coal-dust from home stoves and factories filled the city air, coating windows, clothing, furniture and rugs.

Washing clothing and linens meant scrubbing by hand in a large zinc or copper tub. Some water would be heated and added to the wash tub, and perhaps a handful of soda to soften the water. Curtains were taken down and washed every fortnight; they were often so blackened by coal smoke that they had to be soaked in salted water before being washed.

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Scrubbing the front wooden doorstep of the home every morning was done to maintain respectability. Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages continued to grow and hours of work continued to decline.

In urban areas, the nine-hour workday became increasingly the norm; the Factory Act limited the workweek to Helped by the Bank Holiday Act of , which created a number of fixed holidays, a system of routine annual vacations came into play, starting with white-collar workers and moving into the working-class. Middle-class Victorians used the train services to visit the seaside, Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing , Brighton , Morecambe and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like Thomas Cook saw tourism and even overseas travel as viable businesses.

By the late Victorian era, the leisure industry had emerged in all cities with many women in attendance. It provided scheduled entertainment of suitable length at convenient locales at inexpensive prices. These included sporting events, music halls, and popular theater. Women were now allowed in some sports, such as archery, tennis, badminton and gymnastics. The advent of Reformism during the 19th century opened new opportunities for reformers to address issues facing women and launched the feminist movement.

They also campaigned for improved female rights in the law, employment, education, and marriage. Property owning women and widows had been allowed to vote in some local elections, but that ended in The Chartist Movement was a large-scale demand for suffrage—but it meant manhood suffrage. Upper-class women could exert a little backstage political influence in high society.

However, in divorce cases, rich women lost control of their children. Before , after divorce rich women lost control of their children as those children would continue in the family unit with the father, as head of the household, and who continued to be responsible for them. Caroline Norton was one such woman, her personal tragedy where she was denied access to her three sons after a divorce, led her to a life of intense campaigning which successfully led to the passing of the Custody of Infants Act and then introduced the Tender years doctrine for child custody arrangement.

Under the doctrine the Act also established a presumption of maternal custody for children under the age of seven years maintaining the responsibility for financial support to the father. Traditionally, poor people used desertion, and for poor men even the practice of selling wives in the market, as a substitute for divorce. It was very difficult to secure divorce on the grounds of adultery, desertion, or cruelty.

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The first key legislative victory came with the Matrimonial Causes Act of It passed over the strenuous opposition of the highly traditional Church of England. The new law made divorce a civil affair of the courts, rather than a Church matter, with a new civil court in London handling all cases. A woman who obtained a judicial separation took the status of a feme sole, with full control of her own civil rights.

Additional amendments came in , which allowed for separations handled by local justices of the peace. The Church of England blocked further reforms until the final breakthrough came with the Matrimonial Causes Act A series of four laws called the Married Women's Property Act passed Parliament from to that effectively removed the restrictions that kept wealthy married women from controlling their own property.

They now had practically equal status with their husbands, and a status superior to women anywhere else in Europe. Bullough argues that prostitution in 18th-century Britain was a convenience to men of all social statuses, and economic necessity for many poor women, and was tolerated by society. The evangelical movement of the nineteenth century denounced the prostitutes and their clients as sinners, and denounced society for tolerating it.

The "regulationist policy" was to isolate, segregate, and control prostitution. The main goal was to protect working men, soldiers and sailors near ports and army bases from catching venereal disease. Young women officially became prostitutes and were trapped for life in the system.

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