“Deeds Not Words” This was the slogan of the WSPU which, led by Emmeline Pankhurst was a militant suffrage group willing to resort to violence to promote her agenda. Born in Moss Side, Manchester on 15th July 1858, Emmeline Pankhurst is arguably one of the most recognisable figures of first wave feminism or indeed of Continue Reading
Women on the move: Ella Baker and Amy Ashwood Garvey
During the early to mid-20th century, five million African-Americans made the passage from the former slave-holding south to the industrialised cities of the north and west United States. Cruel Jim Crow laws and tough financial situations forced families to move hundreds of miles to states such as New York, Illinois and Michigan, where demand for Continue Reading
Simone de Beauvoir
Feminism as a movement has evolved dramatically since its popularisation in the mid twentieth century. Today, modern Western feminists use their keyboards as their weapons substituting for the more provocative arson attacks and hunger strikes employed by those for whom women’s suffrage was the leading battle. The fight for gender equality in the western world Continue Reading
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Most famous for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or Life Among the Lowly, the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist whose writings had a profound effect on the public debate surrounding slavery. Indeed, such was the significance of her novel in galvanising public opinion during the mid-nineteenth century that the discussion surrounding the novel Continue Reading
The First World War: a Sexy Affair?
Using the term ‘sexy’ to describe the First World War is not only majorly outdated but a more literal mistake. War has often changed the relation between masculinity and femininity;positive impacts for women have occurred such as greater work and social opportunities with idols such as Florence Nightingale sparking feminist thought or women gaining work Continue Reading