Feminism and Feminists After Suffrage by Julie V. Gottlieb

Author:Julie V. Gottlieb [Gottlieb, Julie V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317402435
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

A focus on women’s organisations and activities at a local level reinforces the view that the inter-war period was not one of political dormancy for women, but rather the opposite—one in which new organisations and forms of activism came into being, as a range of issues was taken up by the wider women’s movement. It also suggests that a focus on the Westminster parliament as a means of assessing the impact either of ‘feminism’ or of women’s political influence more generally is too narrow. Parliamentary lobbying necessarily preoccupied activists who aimed to enshrine equal rights in law; the women who promoted equal rights as such were the most likely to either call themselves ‘feminist’ or be described as ‘feminist’ in newspapers like The Scotsman. Although women in Scottish networks, local branches and organisations sometimes supported such initiatives, they do not appear to have directed their main energies to lobbying on equal rights issues. In a similar way the disputes which polarised ‘national’ committees, such as the split in NUSEC in 1927, were not necessarily replicated at local level. Moreover, differences in local politics influenced the salience of specific issues and responses to them, whether the prominence of the campaign against Venereal Diseases Bills in Edinburgh, or the sensitivity of the birth control issue in Glasgow.

In general, the issues which appear to have exercised Glasgow and Edinburgh women’s organisations most were those concerned with major public policy concerns: housing, contraception, and maternal health and child welfare, while campaigns around the regulation of prostitution brought together equal rights, moral hygiene, and health and welfare interests. Overall such campaigns were more concerned with ‘welfare feminism’ than ‘equal rights’ feminism, although many organisations took up issues of both types. This local evidence is consonant with the view that the division between ‘equal rights’ and ‘welfare feminism’ does not stand up, as Sue Innes previously argued of the EWCA,87 although it does not necessarily imply there were no tensions between positions. If welfare issues dominated organisations’ interests, arguably this was because changes in policy and provision could be effected at local level, and local differences could also be significant. Although parliamentary legislation was often required to enable local action, for example, housing acts, local government reorganisation, extension of local government functions, and so on, councils still retained much discretion in their policy approaches. Furthermore, in the important area of health provision there was still a mix of voluntary and municipal provision, and thus women’s organisations could play an active role in developing provision in health visiting, contraceptive advice services, and in housing, even if their projects were limited in terms of the numbers of women they could reach.

We have argued that women’s organisations were allied to class positions which allowed for some contact and cooperation in the 1920s, but that over time class boundaries became less porous. What women’s organisations had in common, however, was a shared view of the importance of citizenship. Women Co-operators were praised for ‘the work being done in the way

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