Labour Women
Women in British Working Class Politics, 1918–1939

This book describes the struggles and successes of Labour women in the interwar years.

Pamela M. Graves (Author)

9780521412476, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 February 1994

300 pages, 9 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.567 kg

'A rich and revealing study of the labour women who tried - and failed - to win the Labour Party and Co-operative movement to a politics of sexual equality and a programme of woman-centred social reforms. A very good book.' Anne Phillips, Professor of Politics, London Guildhall University

After winning the vote in 1918, many thousands of working class women joined the Labour Party and Co-operative Movement. This book is about their struggle to find a place in the male world of organised labour politics. In the twenties, labour women challenged male leaders to give them equal status and support for their reform programmes, but the ideas were rejected. For most labour women, dedication to the class cause far outweighed their desire for power, and the struggle for 'women-power' was abandoned. Consequently, despite the common reform agendas of labour women and the middle class feminists of the era, a working alliance was never achieved. Labour Women uses oral and questionnaire testimony to draw a portrait of grass-roots activists. It contrasts labour women's failure to win power in the national organisations with their great achievements in community politics, poor law administration and municipal government.

Introduction
1. The doors are open - women's entry into Labour politics
2. Their devotion was about equal - women and men in interwar working-class politics
3. But the seats are reserved for men - the gender struggles of the twenties
4. A sex question or a class question? - Labour women and feminism in the twenties
5. Helping others - women in local labour politics
6. Doing our bit to see that the people are not dragged down - class struggle in the thirties
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], British & Irish history [HBJD1]