The very first female agent that served with SOE was a Polish-Jewish Aristocrat known as Krystyna Skarbek. In addition to being the first woman to serve with the SOE, Skarbek was also the longest serving field agent, male or female, during the SOE’s existence.
As a character in Genesis, Eve’s entire existence is explored in relation to man, whether that be as a wife or a mother. As the first woman, there is a notion that she is the mother of all humans, the pinnacle of woman.
In 1968 there were 55,000 men employed at Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham Factory and only 187 women. These female machinists were informed that their job had been degraded to ‘unskilled’ work resulting in reduced pay. Consequently, the women went out on strike demanding, quite rightly, their grading be changed, and that they be given the appropriate pay.
For centuries, women in western Europe suffering from a long list of, sometimes vague, symptoms – including anxiety, loss of sexual desire, or too much sexual desire, insomnia and being ‘difficult’- could find themselves being labelled with the common medical diagnosis of ‘female hysteria’.
Women’s arrival in positions of political and economic power coincided with the emergence of gender history as they entered the historical mainstream. Scholars began to analyse gender’s role in familial and political power dynamics, and its use as a tool to reinforce male dominance.
