“Our BODIES, our LIVES, our RIGHTS, our FUTURE”, chants the website of the women’s rights organisation poignantly titled the Handmaid Coalition. Formed in response to the outcome of the 2016 American Presidential election, which, they claim, “changed us all”, this collective are “fighting to ensure fiction does not become reality”. But why would a modern Continue Reading
Got To Be Real: A History of Drag
Got to Be Real: A History of Drag For as long as people have worn clothes, they have been dressing in outfits designed for the opposite gender. However, drag as we know it began when it was adopted by LGBT pioneers who turned it into an art, rubbing more than a few people up Continue Reading
Caster Semenya
Caster Semenya is a 27-year-old South African middle-distance runner who rose to prominence after winning the 800m at the 2009 World Championships at the age of 18 with consummate ease. The talk after her victory was not about Semenya’s age, or her impressive time of 1.55.45, but instead her sex. At this year’s Commonwealth Games, Continue Reading
When Archives Meet Activism: The Role of Historical Research in the Irish Abortion Debate
In less than three months the Republic of Ireland will vote on a referendum that, if passed, could mark a watershed for female reproductive rights within the country. Merely an hour’s flight away, Ireland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. Under the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution a woman cannot Continue Reading
The Birth of Women’s Studies
Throughout the lengthy development of historical academic fields, there has often persisted the notion of an underlying patriarchal bias. The scope of research being conducted has often had an institutionalized predisposition to focus upon male scholars, figures and ideas, leading to the neglect of the vital roles women have played throughout history. Continue Reading