This fascinating new study examines the experiences of women involved in the socialist movement during its formative years in Britain and the active role they played in campaigning for the vote. By giving full attention to this much-neglected group of women, Socialist Women examines and challenges the orthodox views of labour and suffrage history.
Torn between competing loyalties of gender, class and politics, socialist women did not have a fixed identity but a number of contested identities. June Hannam and Karen Hunt probe issues that created divisions between these women, as well as giving them the opportunity to act together. In three fascinating case studies they explore:
* women's suffrage
* women and internationalism
* the politics of consumption.
Believing above all that being a woman was vital to their politics, these individuals sought to develop a woman-focused theory of socialism and to put this new politics into practice.
Biography
June Hannam is Reader in History at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Her publications include numerous articles on socialist and suffrage politics and a biography Isabella Ford, 1855–1924 (1989).
Karen Hunt is Senior Lecturer in History at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has published widely on women’s politics, particularly on aspects of the gendering of socialism, including Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question, 1884–1911 (1996).
