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Abstracts
of Papers Presented at the 4th Conference of the Federation:
11-14 August 2003, Queen's University Belfast
Arranged By Surname:
Lilia
Labidi (University of Tunis, Tunisia)
Bronwyn
Labrum (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
Cecilia Lagunas and Silvia Mallo (National University of
Lujan, Argentina)
Christiana Lambrinidis
(Athens, Greece)
Jane Lancaster (Brown University, USA)
Linda Lane (Goteborg University,
Canada)
Anne Laurence (The Open University, UK)
Catherine Lawless (University of Limerick, Ireland)
Kriste Lindenmeyer (University of Maryland, Baltimore,
USA)
Kimberly A Loprete
(National University of Ireland, Galway)
Sharon Low (Melbourne University, Australia)
Margaret Lowe (Bridgewater State College, USA)
Anna Lundberg (Umea University, Sweden)
Margaret MacCurtain (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Charlotte MacDonald (Victoria University of Wellington,
New Zealand)
Alison Mackinnon (University
of Southern Australia)
Linda
Martz (American University of Paris, France)
Nuala McAllister
(University of Ulster, Northern Ireland)
Jane McDermid (University of Southampton, UK)
Sophie McGrath (Australian
Catholic University, Australia)
Elizabeth McKenna (Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland)
Kari Melby (Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, Trondheim)
Cary
Miller (University of Wisconsin, USA)
Angus
Mitchell (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland)
Isabel Moreton (Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK)
Susan Morgan (University
College Chichester, UK)
T
Barbara
Mortimer (Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, Scotland)
Marianna Mouravieva (Herzen State
Pedagogical University, Russia)
Maureen O. Murphy (Hofstra University, New York, USA)
Hiroko Nagano (Chuo University Japan)
Nordica Nettleton (University
of Glasgow, Scotland)
Beryl Nicholson (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK)
Harriet
Nkomazana (Anglia Polytechnic University, UK)
Lisa Norling (University of Minnesota, USA)
Alison Oram (University College Northampton, UK)
Alison Oram - Presentation with Charlotte MacDonald, Barbara
Brookes and Anna Clark
Adele Perry
(University of Manitoba, Canada)
Vilana Pilinkaite-Sotirovic
(Vilnius, Lithuania)
Amelia Polonia (Universidade do Porto,
Portugal)
Kim E Power (Australian
Catholic University)
Rima Praspaliauskiene (University of California
Berkeley, USA)
June
Purvis (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Natalia Pushkareva
(Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)
Lilia Labidi (University of Tunis, Tunisia): Nawal El-Saadawi, Rita El-Khayat and Nejia Zemni: on Arab Psychiatry and Sexuality
It is generally agreed that it is difficult for Arab-Muslim women doctors to speak of intimate and sexual matters with their patients. It is even more difficult for these women doctors themselves to speak publicly of these subjects, and even more so of their own intimate experiences and their own emotions. In fact, it was only in June 2001 that the Arab Psychiatrists' Association devoted its meeting to the mental health of women. We might even suggest that before this date this subject was hardly addressed within the profession. In the last several years, three women professionals -- an Egyptian psychiatrist, a Moroccan psychiatrist, and a Tunisian psychotherapist - have published their memoirs, in which they discuss women, the family, their personal lives and sexuality. These publications, by women who had been dismissed from institutions in which they worked during, respectively, the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, strongly reinforce the view that discussion of such questions has been largely absent until very recently. However, whereas in the cases of Rita El-Khayat and Nejia Zemni the main focus of discussion is on the profession and their professional careers, with Nawal El-Saadawi we are in the presence of the first Arab woman doctor to evoke the condition of women in the Arab world and to speak of the sexuality of her patients as well as her own. I propose to discuss here how, in the Arab world, on the occasions where women or women doctors begin to examine the relationship between patriarchal medical institutions and the women within them -- both care-givers and patients -- they confront taboos which necessarily give to the private dimension a public, even political, significance.
Bronwyn Labrum (University of Waikato, New Zealand):
Developing 'the Essentials of Good Ctizenship and Responsibilities'
in Maori Women: Family Life, Social Change and the State in New Zealand, 1944-1970
New Zealand's twentieth century welfare state was distinctive for a number of reasons. As well as being characterised by its attempts at universal provision and benefits, it also made unprecedented provision for the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori. The Department of Native (then Maori) Affairs had a separate welfare division, which employed Maori welfare officers, to inculcate 'the essentials of good citizenship and responsibilities' and to promote social change in a period when Maori were becoming one of the most highly-urbanised indigenous peoples in the world. Female Maori welfare officers worked with women and children and attempted to effect a form of 'race uplift ' that has also been identified in the welfare work of African American women in the southern United States. In the areas of marriage and family life this entailed attention to the living conditions and general standard of living of Maori families, with a 'good home' increasingly recognised as 'the source of all social progress'. With its echo of modernity, 'social progress' signalled the wider state goal of Maori adjustment to modern life This paper unpacks some of the meanings of a ' good home' as seen through the eyes of female welfare officers and identifies how the particularities of this New Zealand case study illustrate a number of international trends in this period.
Cecilia Lagunas ( Universidad de Lujan, Argentina)
and Silvia Mallo ( Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina): Patrimonial
Heritage and Justice: Their Impact on Families and Women of Spain and Río
De La Plata’s Colonies
In early modern times, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, customary
rights, traditional practices and legal rules on inheritance were central questions
for Spanish women and their families. During this time, when little change in
inheritance systems took place, women appeared preoccupied in maintaining the
familiar patrimony. When Spanish culture was transferred to the American colonies,
the Spanish inheritance system was adopted by a very different kind of people
and society than existed on the Iberian Peninsula.. From the time of the Spanish
conquest, American society, ethnically mixed, used Spanish law and inheritance
systems. It was the most important legacy from Spain to America. We examine
here with a comparative overview some judicial cases concerning inheritance
disputes [Relaciones de Causas] involving Spanish and American women in the
early modern period. Our presentation considers the practice of Real Justice
in the Spanish Kingdom, the changes in familiar structure in relation to inheritance
and patrimony and their impact on women's familiar role on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean. Finally we look at the representations of women in the legal
documents of the time.
Christiana Lambrinidis (Athens, Greece):
Partisan in Drag: Orality in the History of Forbidden Women's Sexuality
in Greece
?. ? is 82 years old. A Greek kind of Louise Bourgeois. If only imagination and desire became the manifestations of our lives, then ?. ?’s imprisonment could very well occur inside Louise Bourgeois’ cells. If memory is the ghost writer of the orality between a Greek woman actor imprisoned for her politics and expelled for her disclosed sexuality, and a French woman sculptor who re-conceptualized art at the edge of expulsion, then within the performativity of one lies the masquerading of the other. If private is also the topos where women’s bodies have inscribed expulsions from the fantasmatic self, then a partisan in drag can be written between art and civil war as the history of women’s sexuality in Greece. I would like to discuss the formations and impact of this forbidden history. [?. ? co-stared with Melina Mercouri in Lymberaki’s “Phaedra” directed by Jule Dassin. She also came up with the idea of international theater day adopted and implemented by UNESCO. We met through a common friend as women who inhabit the periphery effectively for our separate causes.]
Jane Lancaster (Brown University, USA): "Here I stand, the case!" Efficiency, Eugenics, and Family Life in the USA
During the first decades of the twentieth century the United States witnessed rapid immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, the coming of age of the "new woman" and a dramatic decrease in middle-class fertility. These circumstances alarmed many, and politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt warned of "race suicide" and castigated women for their irresponsible "fear of maternity." There was anxiety about the deterioration of the national stock as the "less fit" had large families, while the "better classes" failed to reproduce themselves, and the eugenics movement, a discourse of ethnic and intellectual superiority, gained many supporters amongst progressives. Simultaneously, a discourse of efficiency also gained adherents from progressives, who wanted the operations of industry and government to be measured and studied, then managed "scientifically." In this paper I demonstrate how these two discourses interacted on the family, and on women's role within the family. I analyze how Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, two leading exponents of scientific management applied eugenic ideas to themselves. By producing a dozen children in less than seventeen years they tried to demonstrate that it was possible to raise and educate a large family and do it economically and efficiently while the mother was professionally active. This "experiment" reached public prominence in the 1920s after the widowed mother became famous for raising her large family alone, and again in the 1940s when Cheaper By the Dozen, an account of life with father and mother written by two of the children, became a best-seller. This paper examines how the Gilbreth family experiment was presented to the public in two different decades, the 1920s al1d 1940s, and what it revealed about changes in public attitudes to women' s familial roles.
Linda Lane (Goteborg University, Canada):
Crossing the Burning Sands: Women as Breadwinners During the Inter-War Period
1920-1940
The industrial revolution got underway in Sweden in the second half of the 19th century. In this transformation, the ideology of men in the public sphere of the polity and women in the private sphere of the family was given new meaning with the emergence of a new sphere - the labor market. As women claimed the right to work in this new sphere, a question arose. Should the old ideology that gave women and men complementary roles with separate characteristics and spheres of interest be extended into the new economic sphere? By the inter-war period in Sweden, further fuel to the debate was added by declining population growth, which raised concerns for the future of the family and by high unemployment levels resulting from the economic instability of the period. The last vestige of formal inequality and discrimination was removed when Swedish women were given full political emancipation in 1919. As formal discriminatory pressures lessened, social pressures for women to restrict their activities to labor within the household increased. Women, who sought employment outside the home, entered labour markets where the old ideology had prevailed; employment and occupations were limited by socially constructed ideas based on preconceived conceptions of gender. The depression of the 1930s and general economic unrest of the inter-war period compounded the already tenuous position of women in the labor market. This notwithstanding, during the inter-war period a multitude of women, who given other circumstances, would not have done so entered the labor market to earn much needed income, in some cases as the family’s only breadwinner. As a part of my ongoing study of the economic consequences of the inter-war period for wage-earning women, this paper will explore women’s contributions to household income. The focus of the paper is two groups of women, those who regardless of the economy were expected to support themselves and their families – single women with children, and widowed or divorce women with children and a second group composed of married women with unemployed husbands. The aim of the paper is to explore differences and similarities in the two groups strategies to prevent the complete collapse of family resources through labour market participation.
Anne Laurence (The Open University, UK): The
Case of Lady Betty Hastings 1672-1739
Lady Betty Hastings (1672-1739) is chiefly remembered as a great philanthropist, both during her lifetime and, especially, after her death. However, greatest beneficiaries of the fortune that she inherited from her grandfather were her family. As and unmarried woman, she was intensely conscious both of the significance of her lineage through the noble Hastings family, and of the obligations that her Lewis inheritance carried. Her sense of family is especially evident in her testamentary dispositions. She desired to be buried in the same grave as her grandfather, Sir John Lewis, the source of her fortune, and she made great efforts in her will to ensure that any of his surviving relatives who might have benefited from the more distant provisions of his will, should receive something. Although this might have been a device to protect her charitable legacies from challenges, her conduct towards her poorer female relations during her life-time suggests that she felt strongly that women, especially the unmarried women to whom she was related, needed particular help. It was rumoured that she was intending to provide money for a refuge from men on the model proposed by Mary Astell and she took an active interest in her investments and in the financial affairs of her poorer half sisters, whom she supported during her life-time. The paper will consider Lady Betty Hastings' s attitudes towards her poorer female kin on the basis of her actions towards them and in the context of her wider charitable activity.
Catherine Lawless (University of Limerick, Ireland): The Female Saint and Female Identity in Renaissance Florence
In hagiography, the locus of sin for the saint was the female body. Sanctity
was achieved by resisting its desires for food, sex, warmth, and freedom from
pain. The ideal of female sanctity was constructed around the virtues of virginity,
chastity, and humility. The construct was thus largely founded upon passive
and introverted values, and easily fits in the much used model of the feminine
space belonging to the private world of interiority, domesticity, and restriction.
The contrasting male space, in this model, is one of open, public, expansive
activity, and can be applied to the study of male sanctity in that the range
of activities open to the male saint was wider, and although celibacy was usual,
it was rarely the only defining characteristic of of that saints life. Although
the public/private dichotomy can be qualified in many respects, it remains a
useful model for examining the behaviour of the ruling classes of Florence and,
more importantly in this context, for examining the way in which those classes
represented themselves. While female saints were frequently depicted, very few
were depicted in an explicitly civic context and the majority of monumental
fresco cycles in fifteenth-century Florence commemorated male saints. That heroism
was not seen as a female characteristic is exemplified by the controversy surrounding
Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, criticised by contemporaries for its lack
of decorum in showing a man subdued by a woman. This paper will look at how
the leading families of Florence adopted particular saints cults in order to
establish a familial identity within the urban space. Saints would be associated
with particular families through naming patterns (the most successful example
of this association is the Medici family and saints Cosmas, Damian, Julian and
Laurence). In a patrilinear society, these names and saints would invariably
be male. It will also examine the type of female saint depicted in Renaissance
Florence (virgin martyr; matron; widow; penitent; mendicant), and explore the
discrepancy between manuscript texts and legends of saints and what was depicted
within the city's churches. In so doing, the relationship between text and image,
and that between (male) author/painter/scribe and female sanctity and its audiences
will be discussed. Florentinand will explore the problems in the construction
of visual exemplars for women.
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Chang-Sin Lee (Durksung Women’s University, Korea): Freedom for the Second Sex: American Girls and "New Woman" in 1920s
The image of the 1920s in the popular American imagination, is an era of affluence, conservatism, and cultural frivolity; the Roaring Twenties or what Warren G. Harding once called the age of "normalcy." In reality, however, the decade was a time of significant, even dramatic social, economic, and political changes. It was an era in which the American economy not only enjoyed spectacular growth but also developed to reflect the urban, industrial, consumer-oriented society. It was a decade in which American government experimented with new approaches to public policy that helped pave the way for the important period of reform that was to follow. American women also experienced major social, economic, and gender changes. The First World War had done more to redefine relations between the sexes and emancipate women than years or even centuries of previous struggles. Furthermore, women's experiences gave them new mobility and self confidence. After World War I, the "new woman" burst into the news. Like the Gibson girl of the 1890s, flapper became the symbol of her generation. With her short, straight skirt, lean torso, cropped hair, rouge on her cheeks, and cigarette in her mouth, she was the epitome of youth, adventure, and healthy sex. She hoped to achieve financial independence by pursuing a career, and also carried sexual freedom. The revolution in manners and morals took "the two fold form of more permissive sexuality and diminished femininity. Behavior that was exceptional in the prewar years, became common in urban America in the twenties. It used to be argued that the "liberation" of American women occurred in the 1920s with the emergence of the "flapper." The flapper phenomenon was explained by referring to the disillusionment that affected people after World War I. Many scholars argued that the flappers were the exceptions rather than the rule in the 1920s, that they were by no means as liberated as they and others thought, and that, in any case, the struggle for true equality of the sexes was far from over. Furthermore, much more significant changes in the lives of women were taking place at that time than those associated with what the flappers meant in the 1920s should not be underestimated. New women experienced not only economic independence, but also freedom of sexuality. Their experiences continued to influence the following generation. The existing studies about women in the "Jazz Age," mainly reflect the experiences of a small part of the middle-class elite. They argue that most American women in the 1920s continued to live in ways bound by tradition and economic limits. The main purpose of this study, however, is to suggest a new perspective for American women in the 1920s. The 1920s have to be regarded as the "New Era" rather than the "Roaring Twenties." The economic and sexual emancipation for American women in the 1920s provided a turning point in the history of American women.
Gwen N. Lesetedi (Sociology Department, University
of Botswana): `The City is for Work, the Village is Home': Straddling
the Urban-Rural Divide in the Quest for Survival among Urban Dwellers in Gaborone
Urban dwellers tend to view the city as a place to work while the village of origin is considered home. They maintain strong linkages with the rural areas as a survival strategy and these linkages represent vital safety valves and welfare options for urban people who are vulnerable to economic fluctuations. Existing research suggests that urban-rural linkages may vary by factors such as education, employment, age and gender. Gender appears to play a more prominent role in determining the type and extent of urban-rural linkages maintained by urban dwellers with their villages. The paper focuses on the gender factor in urban-rural linkages within the context of rapid urbanisation. Utilising a sample of females and males resident in Gaborone, it profiles their perception of urban-rural linkages as a survival strategy and assesses how gender may impact on the nature and extent of such linkages. Urban-rural linkages are construed in terms of property ownership and involvement in economic activities in rural areas; participation in social activities; exchange of money, goods, and visits; and advice seeking patterns.
Kriste Lindenmeyer (University of Maryland,
Baltimore, USA): US Progressive and Child Welfare Standards
By 1900, child welfare advocates in the United States believed that only standardization could provide protections for every American child. Leaders in the American child welfare movement called for the establishment of a federal child welfare agency that would investigate, report, and promote the interests of the nation's youngest citizens. In 1912, the U.S. Children's Bureau became the first federal government agency in the world mandated to solely focus on the interests of children. Although the bureau started with meager funding and had only limited authority, over the next four decades the U.S. Children's Bureau successfully promoted the idea that investigation, regulation, and standardization was necessary to ensure the modern right to childhood for all young people. Julia C. Lathrop was named the agency's chief, and thereby became the first woman to head a federal agency in the United States. Lathrop, her staff, and supporters relied on the middle-class model for childhood: economically independent nuclear families with the father as the sole breadwinner, the mother as full-time housewife, and children who spent their time in school and doing "chores" at home. Investigation, prescription, and standardization formed the cornerstones of implementing U.S. Children' s Bureau policies. The bureau set standards, but also limited the ability of social workers to adapt to the needs of individual children. Examining the Children's Bureau's establishment, early work, and publications reveals the weaknesses and strengths of the standardization model.
Ulrike Lindner (University of the Bundeswehr,
München, Germany): Dangerous Sexualities. The Medical Control
of “Promiscous Women” as a Means of Fighting Venereal Diseases
In Germany, medical measures against sexually transmitted diseases, i.e. gonorrhoea
and syphilis, focused strongly on the control of “promiscous women”.
Prostitutes and “amateurs“ as dangerous transmitters of venereal
diseases remained a central point of medical strategies for fighting venereal
diseases, even a long time after the Second World War. With the Geschlechtskrankheitengesetz
(law for venereal diseases) of 1927 the regulation of prostitution by the police
was abandoned and changed into a medical control of all “persons who are
suspect of spreading venereal diseases“ by the local health authorities.
However, although the abolitionists saw this as a triumph over police regulation
and the law was phrased in a neutral way, in practice all medical measures were
aimed only at female prostitutes and “amateurs“ (in German hwG-Personen
= Personen mit häufig wechselndem Geschlechtsverkehr). The control measures
were connected with compulsory treatment for people suffering from venereal
disease. Even if during the Weimar republic counselling centres and health education
had an important role and there was a quite pragmatic approach towards these
diseases, medical control of prostitution and compulsory treatment remained
important strategies. Venereal diseases were still seen as a danger to the nation’s
health by the medical authorities, especially by the public health sector. During
the Third Reich the competence of the police to regulate prostitution was reinforced
and prostitutes and “amateurs” had to suffer from severe prosecution.
The element of coercion in policies against venereal diseases was generally
strengthened. During the Allied occupation the control measures remained harsh
and severe. After 1949, even if gonorrhoe and syphilis now could be easily cured
with the new antibiotics, medical control of promiscous women and compulsory
treatment remained important strategies of the public health sector in West
Germany. A new venereal diseases law was introduced in the Federal Republic
in 1953, which referred in most paragraphs to the 1927 law. Medical strategies
against dangerous sexualities still focused on medical control of “dangerous
transmitters“ and on compulsory treatment of these persons. In practice
the local health authorities still aimed at “promiscous women“.
In the medical press of the 1950s there were highly exaggerated scenarios of
uncontrolled „amateurs“ spreading venereal diseases amongst hundreds
of thousands of people which were of course never based on sound statistical
data. However, from this point of view coercion and control of prostitutes and
“promiscous amateurs” still had an important role, even if venereal
diseases were no longer a danger to the nation’s health and could be cured
as any other infection.
John
Logan (University of Limerick, Ireland)
M. Teresa López-Beltrán (University
of Malaga, Spain): Life and Survive in the Frontier: The Social
Value of Women's Honour
Widows constitute a specific group of women whose lives after the death of their husbands don't seem to experience substantial changes, given that they go on to take the place of the dead husband with the responsibilities that imply being the head of the domestic group (administration and organisation of the family patrimony, education of the children). In many of these cases privilege means remaining chaste and widow for life or opting for a second marriage if we are talking about artisan widows. This simple scheme that juridical sources offer us becomes complicated and diversifies when we recur to other types of sources (notary protocols) and we analyse the diverse widows' strategies, not so as to live, but rather to survive in a world thought out for men and in a frontier society in which there is a lack of resources and their condition as single women makes them vulnerable in the eyes of the community. We centre our article on the Kingdom of Granada in the period of the Catholic kings, analysing the percentage of widows that at the outset of the repopulating made up the frontier society beginning with the "Libros de Repartimiento", trying to follow the setbacks that they suffered and the distinct ways that they chose to reorganise their lives.
Kimberly A Loprete (National University of Ireland,
Galway): The Natural Virago: Physiological Theory, Gendered Household
Roles and Medieval Perceptions of Female Lords
This paper exposes fundamental anachronisms in modern perceptions of the medieval aristocratic women who acted with lordly authority when playing out their traditional household roles. Modern scholarship casts such domince at best as 'honorary men'; at worst, as unnatural women, usurpers of powers not properly theirs who aroused fear and suspicion in their male contemporaries. Anachronism colours this assessment in three ways, pointing not only to the need to re-examine medieval views, but also to how proper contextualisation reveals important similarities between the situation of elite women in medieval Europe and in cultures geographically or chronologically distant. The first anachronism relates to 'scientific' views of women's 'nature'. Medieval understandings of physiology and reproductive processes do not render all women 'naturally', physically distinct from all men. On the contrary, by stressing how masculine and feminine traits are diversely distributed to individual persons, they explain how 'manly women' would be perfectly natural. Inherited cultural and religious traditions reinforced the notion that strong women's 'man-like' powers were written into the order of things. Secondly, in medieval Europe many 'public' judicial, economic, and political powers-vested in the 'state' in the modern west-were by contrast exercised within an extended 'private sphere'-the dynastic families and residential households of powerful lords-that at times virtually subsumed the 'public sphere' of modern social theory. When family members wielded more authority than salaried state agents, both women's inherited lordly status and their traditional household roles as nurturers, provisioners, fund-managers, and mothers of theirs, brought them to the centre of the public-political stage without their departure from their proper 'domestic sphere'. Consequently, the third anachronism is at the level of perception. Lordly women remained women, expected to behave largely as others of like rank and valued most for their fertility; indeed, sons were a key source of their powers. The authority they exercised when playing out their household roles over the life-cycle of lordly families was 'naturalised' in theories that did not equate anatomical sex with gender. The reproductive lottery underlying: socio-political structures guaranteed their regular appearance in modest yet significant numbers. Most men would have treated with at least one, and, absent virulent disagreements over specific actions, viewed female lords as 'natural women' wielding significant political power as a matter of course. Once the powers of medieval lordly women are properly appraised, not only can their contributions to European socio-political history over the longue duree be reassessed, but analysis of the structures of thought and society that brought them to the fore-at the same time as they constrained the behaviours of all women-can yield insights into the signal deeds of women from other times and places, and how they were perceived by men.
Sharon Low (Melbourne University, Australia): Penetrating the Orient: British Women Travelers to the Middle East and their Encounter with the 'Eastern woman' within the Harem
This paper looks at representations of the 'Eastern woman' and the institution
of the harem in the travel writings of British women who journeyed to the Middle
East in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. As the only Western travellers
who could safely and legitimately penetrate the inner sanctums of the domestic
sphere inhabited by Eastern women, Western women occupied a unique position
as privileged observers of an institution that has mystified, scandalized and
titillated Western society for centuries. Depictions of the 'Eastern woman'
as 'free' and safe within the inviolable space of the seraglio produced an important
counter discourse to traditional pejorative understandings of the veil and the
seclusion of women within the seraglio, and underscore the importance of understanding
the contemporary socio-political context and gender discourses that framed the
perceptions and writings of British women travelers.
Margaret Lowe (Bridgewater State College, USA): ‘Why
Must I Be the Only Woman to Lose My Birthright’ : Marriage, Class, and Sexuality
in Early Twentieth Century America
How might a woman – a passionate, sensual upper-class woman – confronted with impotence and infertility, have rendered her experience in early twentieth-century, urban America? The history of marriage and sexuality is fraught with such questions, yet due to their intimate nature, few answers emerge. The interior, self-reflective aspects of sexuality remain particularly opaque. Though still sketchy, the words and images penned by Marian Lawrence Peabody (1875-1968) offer some clues. Peabody, an eminent Bostonian kept a diary for most of her long life, but unlike most upper class, American diarists, she emphasized her emotional responses to the world around her. And her world, though filled with tremendous privilege, also included years of profound confusion and disappointment. After her celebrated marriage in 1906 to her first cousin, Harold Peabody (over 500 guests attended her wedding), Marian endured eight years of sexual difficulties before she finally became pregnant with her one and only child. Through her narrative of those years (part of which was written several years later), we can decode some of the meanings – both cultural and personal – given to such sexual and marital strife in modern US history. Peabody’s intensely intimate rendering of her courtship reads like a romantic thriller. Harold, besotted, could not “live without her,” fearing his “immaturity” Marion resisted but at last “thrills” him with her assent. In stark contrast to his courting persona, once married Harold becomes possessive, withdrawn, and simmers with jealous rage. At the center of it all lay his impotency and her infertility. Peabody a keen aesthete with a sensual appreciation of “handsome men,” nature, music, and her own physicality was suddenly cast out. She searched for reasons (his shyness, sleeping medicine, her teasing) but finally she just wailed: “I did lose all hope today and was convinced that Harold was impotent like Carlisle & Ruskin _ his depressed, grouchy disposition going to prove it. Why, why must I be the only woman to lose my birthright? To be married & yet not married at all! To long, long all my life for children of my own, & to slowly, slowly lose all hope of them. To pretend, pretend everyday& all day that we are like other happy, married couples, & yet suffer physically & mentally always because we are not.” This is just but one example of Peabody’s heart-breaking but also historically significant descriptive force. Through an analysis of such entries, Peabody’s story reveals that in the early twentieth-century, upper-class women expected (and were expected) to enjoy an intimate, sexually pleasurable, fertile, marital relationship. When they did not, it threatened their sense of self and their social standing. It was only through her willful, dogged determination that Peabody managed to hold on. She contacted doctors, finally confided in one friend, and at her wits end petitioned Harold’s parents for help. In doing so, she managed to navigate a complex set of gender, class, and personal codes that illuminate both the pleasures and dangers interwoven in new notions of modern, female sexuality.
Anna Lundberg (Umea University, Sweden): Treating Gender – Men, Women and the Reshaping of Gender Roles in Swedish Hospitals for the Mentally Ill at the turn of the Nineteenth Century
Much previous international research has debated the Victorian image of the
insane woman as a victim of her reproductive organs. Historians of ideas and
culture has illustrated how nineteenth century physicians argued that women
brought to close to sexuality could easily succumb to feelings and experiences
that would render her insane. The extent use of gynaecological surgery has also
been vividly discussed among Swedish, British and American scholars, arguing
that Victorian surgeons thought hysterectomies would relieve women of their
psychological diseases. Testing the idea on patient-records from an insane asylum
exclusively for women, Marjorie Levine-Clark showed this to be a strongly overemphasized
theory on nineteenth century ideas on gender and insanity. This paper intends
to investigate how gender was reshaped and made continuous in different Swedish
hospitals during the years 1890-1914. The conditions in these hospitals were
reported annually to the National Medical Board (Medicinalstyrelsen) and regular
inspections were made by the Superinspector (Överinspektören). In
these documents, being narrative as well as quantitative sources on the medical
treatment of the mentally ill, questions unasked about health care for these
patients in Sweden can be answered. Were women diagnosed differently, were they
of a specific age or social category and in what manner did the official bodies
of powers, the physicians and the inspectors discuss the reasons for male and
female insanity?
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Margaret MacCurtain (University College Dublin,
Ireland): Family and Vested Interests in the Dissolution of Irish
Nunneries
This paper examines the state of Irish nunneries at the time of their dissolution
during the reign of Henry VIII. How serious was their decline, why were they
dissolved, what families were connected with the nunneries? Who benefitted from
their dissolution? Were they a presence in their setting and was that setting
urban or rural? Was their geographical situation a factor in who was awarded
the 'pickings'? A survey of visual records forms part of the discussion of sources.
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Charlotte MacDonald (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand): The Sexual Dynamics of History - a Retrospective. The Impatience of Feminist History?
See Barbara Brookes
Rosa MacGinley (Austrailian Catholic University): Women Religious: Changing Roles in Public and Private Life
This paper proposes to deal only with women in the Western Catholic tradition. These women came from family milieux which, for the most part made their subsequent religious career a possible life choice, consonant with their prevailing religious culture in different eras such as Early Christian, Medieval and Early Modern. These women entered an organisational culture shaped by the developing legislation of the Roman Catholic Church. Within this, both in their public and private roles. They found both restrictions and freedoms. Throughout, they essentia11y remained part of their families of origin. This paper will draw particularly on material relating to Irish women religious and the transplantation of their religious life milieux to Australia. Such material includes letters, shipboard diaries and memoirs, as well as documentation on Roman legislation and responses to this of specific religious communities.
Alison
Mackinnon (University of Southern Australia): Fantasizing
the Family: 'The Family' in Feminist History, Family History and Demographic
History
This paper looks at representations of 'the family' portrayed through the varied
lenses of feminist history (the family as site of conflict and oppression),
demographic history (the family as the unchanging unit of measurement), and
the family as changeable but a constant presence in family history. These representations
are frequently 'At Odds', some versions offering more spaces for women's voices
and agency than others.
Carmen
Mangion (Birkbeck College, London,UK): Roman
Catholic Women's Congregations in Nineteenth Century England
Roman Catholic women’s congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand women establishing, managing, and maintaining significant Catholic educational and health care institutions in England and Wales were rendered invisible in history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in negotiating the boundaries of religious life, sometimes to their collective benefit, sometimes not. By examining the lives of women religious within a historical context, their vital contribution to the growth of Catholicism and the expansion of women’s role in society is recovered. This text places women religious in the centre of nineteenth-century social history and highlights how they operated within patriarchal structures that sometimes supported, but many times obstructed and dismissed their vision. The family discourse, so prevalent in nineteenth-century England empowered women religious. Women religious revised the family discourse to meet both their corporate and individual needs. They created a new subculture which provided women with group affiliation, career fulfilment, and expanded networks which demonstrate they were not socially isolated. Women achieved self-fulfilment along with companionship. This paper shall explore how from within a conventual establishment, women religious from disparate backgrounds united to create a new family structure. Yet, this organisational construct of family had it’s own built-in ambiguity. While it certainly legitimated and empowered women religious, this dynamic also restricted their actions and created artificial boundaries through communal social control.
Dalia Marcinkeviciene (Vilnius University,
Lithuania): Beyond the Sexual Revolution: Love, Marriage, and Intimacy
in Soviet Lithuania, 1945’s – 1970’s
In postwar Lithuania, ideas of courtship and intimacy and love have been influenced and shaped by the official vision of the New Soviet Woman as well as Soviet family policy and communist morality, in general. Lithuanians were inculcated with the ideology of the family as a “friendly labor collective”, the main goal of which is giving birth to and bringing up children. According to Soviet Women, the only women’s magazine of that time, such a “family collective” was to be composed of two sides: children and parents. The latter up to the end of the fifties were seldom referred by officials as wife and husband, or even – as a woman and man. Such elimination of gender implies that friendly Soviet “family collective” first of all should refuse romantic heterosexual love, friendship and sex as a part of intimacy. Mutual love of man and woman was considered as egoism or small selfishness of parents, which is necessary to overcome. In the late sixties it can be detected some new trends in an official family policy in Soviet Lithuania. The so-called “open” family was proposed by Soviet ideologists and psychologists, and it was preferred to the “closed” type of family. More often than not, heterosexual intimacy was replaced by a preference for same-sex outings, vacations, and social clubs; there was no sex education, no marriage manuals. The extent of Communist ideology in the private lives of women and men in Lithuania from 1945 through 1970 - a time when Western societies were reading popular accounts of studies of human sexuality, and experiencing a sexual revolution – will be discussed. My presentation is based on primary archival sources (sessions of the Parliament of Soviet Lithuania; data from the Ministry of Health and the Hospital of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Vilnius City;) the women’s magazine Soviet Women, 1952 - 1972; and interviews.
Shannon
Martin (Ziibiwing Cultural Society, India): Walking the Path of
Our Grandmothers: 21st Century Anishinaabeg Women
European explorers and missionaries arrived in our territory (Great Lakes) in the mid 1600s. Long before they arrived my Anishinaabeg (Original People) ancestors knew of their coming and the changes to our way of life that they would bring. Prophets visited my ancestors when they were living a peaceful life on the East Coast of Turtle Island (North America). The prophets gave Seven Prophecies to guide the future of all Anishinaabeg. The First Prophecy instructed my ancestors, for their survival, to follow the direction of the setting sun to a place where “food grows on the water.” The Second Prophecy foretold of a Light-Skinned people that would come over “the Great Salt Water in big trees pulled by white clouds.” Other prophecies foretold of death, loss, destruction, struggle, and survival. Many Anishinaabeg believe that we are now in the time of the Seventh Prophecy. As Six Prophecies have come to pass, my people have always relied on the resilience of the women. The women are considered “the backbone of the Anishinaabeg nation.” As a young Anishinaabe woman, I am grateful for the strength, intelligence, and determination of my Anishinaabe Nokomisuk (Grandmothers). Through very terrible times, they were able to carry and hold onto the sacred songs and teachings of life. As we still feel the effects of colonization today, many Anishinaabeg women are trying to absorb all that has been passed down from our courageous Grandmothers to ensure the future of our people.
Linda Martz (American University of Paris, France):
An AIDS-era Reassessment of Christabel Pankhurst’s The Great Scourge and
How to End It
In 1913, suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, then in exile in Paris, published a book on sexual politics in Britain entitled The Great Scourge and How to End It. The activities of her group, the Women’s Social and Political Union, had grown increasingly radical in response to a combination of perceived persistent government betrayal and intense government repression, which included the forcible feeding of hunger-striking suffragette prisoners. Partly in response to this governmental violation of women’s bodies, Pankhurst wrote a series of articles on the politics of marriage, prostitution and venereal disease, which were then published in one volume, The Great Scourge, to favorable reviews. Historians, however, have been less than favorable in their readings of her text, finding in it a manifesto against sexual freedom, and have used it to “illustrate” what they have considered to be the suffragette movement’s fundamentally puritan, retrograde nature. This paper will examine the nature of their criticisms, then attempt to resituate her positions on the issues of control of the female sexual body and on the institutionalization of the male sexual imperative in a line of feminist thinking that grew out of the struggle against the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1880s. For Pankhurst, continuing male insistence on the physical imperative of their sexual urges threatened women in two fundamental ways: by creating a class of women, prostitutes, excluded from society, and by creating a social mechanism which favored the transmission of venereal disease to unsuspecting married women. One of her most critical, and indeed most criticized, points was that women had the right, even the obligation, to refuse to participate in the institution of marriage as long as society was structured in such a way that marriage posed a significant health threat to women.
Marian Matrician (University of Arkansas,
USA): Women's Legal Conflicts in Fifteenth Century Germany
Records of women's legal conflicts in fifteenth century Germany reflect changing ideas about family structure and private life. For example, city authorities in fifteenth century Cologne criticized local women for claiming independence from their husbands' financial or business responsibilities These women were said to be ruining the name of the city abroad, presenting a divided house with uncertain authority structures. The accused claimed to be living in accord with "the long-established customary practice”. Most referred to their practices as ones their families had followed for generations. Such conflicts in late medieval Europe strongly suggest the political and legal boundaries of gender, and the nature of authority within families, may have had more than one model or custom in some places Medieval society promoted eclecticism in law and administration. It was of the essence of medieval society that groups with different legal and social statuses developed distinct customs as a way to protect their spheres of privilege from encroachments by outsiders. But in the sixteenth century, the policy of women's full legal subordination in marriage came into effect across Germany The already commonly practiced notion was uniformly introduced through a network of newly created imperial appellate courts. Still, there continued a steady trickle of quite wealthy women in Germany who disputed the validity of their legal and financial subordination in marriage. The new uniform standard seems imposed in a top-down process of political and social reform. Yet upon closer scrutiny, the level of protest was quite limited, and the new model family doesn't seem very new. The sixteenth century patriarchal household, most famously described by Luther, looks to be a more elaborately theologized version of the husband-wife partnership that arose among a new urban "middle class." The steady expansion of urban commerce and markets meant that most assets, including land, were fluid and used for business investment. New forms of financial arrangements came together in these households, as they looked out upon future prospects altogether different from those of rural society. Innovators and leaders in early modern society often were from this new social group, allied themselves with it, or joined it through marriage. I argue that an ever-expanding realm of scholarly experts (in law, religion, politics) saw the kinship networks of former noble and patriciate authorities as a threat. The force of these private alliances could be reduced by eliminating women's capacity for independent action, atomising each household, and making each man a solitary agent on the same footing. Luther's vision of authority structures defined one vote (or voice) to each house, and to one man. This individuation and simultaneous definition of a gender hierarchy was the model from which political rights developed in early modern society.
Sigridur Matthiasdottir (University of
Iceland): The Women´s Movement of the Interwar-period and
Disputes on Women´s role within the Icelandic Nation-State
The paper will deal with discussions and disputes on the meaning of gender
in Iceland in the Interwar-period, a period which coalesced with the end of
the so called “Icelandic Independence struggle”, and the formation
of modern, independent nation-state in Iceland. The country became independent
from Denmark in 1918 and modern political parties were established in the period
from 1916-1930. This time was furthermore dominated by a widespread social turbulence;
a traditional rural society transformed in an extremely short time into a modern,
industrialized country, causing widespread reactionary mood among large parts
of the population. One of the many questions and disputes in public discussions
touched upon the question of feminism and the role of women. That discussion
can be found in various forms but the central point was if women should stay
at home and bring up the children and take care of the so-called „national
morality“. Or if they could combine that role with being active in society
in general. One of the main arguments against women being active outside the
home was that it would destroy the homes and ultimately, the nation. The Women’s
movement of the Interwar period was heavily influenced by these discussions
and an influential group of women argued that feminism and women’s participation
in public life undermined both femininity and the national well-being. Liberal
women on the other hand argued that women should be able to be active outside
the home. These topics were discussed intensively in a debate which turned around
the connection between women’s role within the Icelandic nation-state
on the one hand and the female nature or the female subject on the other hand.The
discussions were furthermore heavily influenced by the Interwar cultural conservatism.
One of the most prominent spokeswomen for conservative womanhood was for instance
under a great influence from thinkers like Oswald Spengler and his theory on
the “Decline of the West”. If someone “won” this battle
of these two opposite wings it surely was the conservative wing. Icelandic women
were very late in getting public positions, the first Icelandic female lawyer
graduated in 1935, to mention an example. And up to 1978, only 9 women entered
the Icelandic Parliament. A central question is thus how this situation is connected
to nationalism in a peripheral society with a belated nation-building and a
forceful nationalistic discourse.
Tapologo Maundeni (University of Botswana): The Girl Child And HIV: Insights From Botswana
Research from Botswana indicates
that the girl child is at a greater risk of HIV infection than the boy child.
For example, for every HIV-positive boy under the age of 14, there are two HIV-positive
girls in the same age. This article discusses dynamics that account for the
high vulnerability of the girl-child to HIV/AIDS in Botswana. It also highlights
challenges and the way forward to combat HIV and AIDS infection among girls
in Botswana
Nuala McAllister (University of Ulster, Northern
Ireland): Daughters of Cecilia: Women Musicians in 19th
Century Ulster
The unprecedented expansion in the number of women who emerged as piano and singing teachers in Ulster from the mid nineteenth century onwards remains an unresearched phenomenon. This paper outlines the status of these women musicians with reference to Their self-employment as music teachers working from home and their contribution to family incomes. Several central themes will be explored: the women's contribution to the economic function of the family, the self-imposed terms and conditions of their employment and changing patterns of employment practice within the female sector of the music profession. Comparative material will be introduced from other work spheres where women found employment during the nineteenth century. The phenomenal growth in the number of female music teachers, which began c1850 and reached a peak around 1900, was a common experience throughout Britain. Within these fifty years, the established genre of a male dominated profession, which had formed the corpus of music teaching throughout the eighteenth century, was totally reversed. In 19th century Ulster, it was 'daughter musicians' and incoming foreign women teachers who became the vanguard of a new strand of musicians who were to shape the contours of the music teaching profession throughout the twentieth century. Using newspaper sources and memoirs as documentary evidence, this paper examines the momentum and character of this gender shift in Ulster, focussing upon the economic forces and circumstances which enabled married women to use 'the family piano' as a valuable source of income. Consideration is also given to parallel strands of music employment occupied by married women at this time: church organists, music sellers and performers. The paper concludes with an assessment of the social and economic impact of this employment upon family life.
Leanne McCormick (University of Ulster, Northern Ireland): ‘One Yank and They’re Off’: Interaction Between US troops and Northern Irish Women 1942 – 1945.
US forces arrived in Northern Ireland in large numbers from January 1942 onwards. At the peak of their numbers they represented one - tenth of the population, obviously making a great impact on society and especially on the female population. This paper hopes to examine the problems experienced by both the US and British Governments in trying to regulate contact between the local females and troops. Concerns arose over issues such as Venereal Disease and prostitution and the policies implemented and how effective they were will be discussed. The question also arises as to whom the policies were directed and which groups. It will also discuss how the local press and population viewed the troops and how the uniqueness of the Northern Irish situation shaped decision-making. The Second World War has been regarded as a period of change and beginning of a revolution of attitudes towards female sexuality. This will be examined and placed in the context of attitudes towards women in Northern Ireland and the attempts which had been made to control their sexuality in the past. There considered to be a threat and in need of regulation.
Jane McDermid (University of Southampton, UK):
What's to Become of the Daughters'? Working-Class Families and Female Education
in Late Nineteenth Century Scotland
The achievement of the 1872 (Scotland) Education Act was to extend the same basic standards in literacy and numeracy to all, regardless of gender, class or location. Still, gender expectations meant differentiation between girls and boys, in curriculum, attendance, educational and job opportunities, while social class limited the scope of female opportunity and ambition. Most working-class women expected to marry, and most would have long periods in paid employment before marriage, with a significant minority continuing after marriage, and large numbers in seasonal employment. Domestic service remained a key employer for women. Yet the rationale behind the insistence on domestic economy and related subjects in the curriculum of working-class girls, by government and educational reformers alike, was not simply to make good servants and housewives. A clear aim was to reform the working-class family. School was to make up for perceived deficiencies in working-class mothers, who were thought to have too much (bad) influence on their children, and who, it was recognised, often made the decisions in determining family priorities. There was resistance from mothers, partly out of resentment of the implied criticism of their homes, and partly because such a heavily domestic curriculum undermined the traditional emphasis on ‘book learning’ for girls as well as boys. Decisions on girls’ education, like that of their brothers, were generally based on the family’s financial needs and the local economic context. The need to earn a living was not confined to the daughters of the working class, however, and a comparison with lower-middle class girls underlines the key interaction between gender and social class in the education and occupational expectations of lower class girls.
Hazel McFarlane (University of Glasgow, Scotland):
Invisible Women: The impact of institutionalisation on ‘blind’
women’s participation in relationships, childbearing and mothering.
Traditionally women’s social roles have been strongly associated with the home; housekeeping, childbearing and rearing. Although the roles of homemaker, wife and mother have conventionally been regarded as a feminine domain, historically visually impaired women have often been excluded from these conventional roles through spatial segregation, demeaning stereotypes and negative social attitudes. Blind Asylums were established in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1793 and 1828 respectively by local philanthropists with the aim to take care of individuals considered ‘less fortunate’ by society. The asylums located on the periphery of the cities facilitated the systematic removal of blind women from society. Within the Blind Asylums, men and women were treated very differently. Blind men, despite their impairment, were expected to have family responsibilities they worked in the asylum workshops by day while returning to their families in the evening. Blind women were not expected to have such responsibilities. Indeed, female inmates were kept resident within the institutions. Strict regimes dictated all their movements leaving them very little control over their lives, unlike blind men. In addition, advertising literature produced by the institutions frequently contained demeaning portrayals of female inmates, thereby contributing to the evolution of negative stereotypes of blind women as vulnerable, child-like and as such, asexual. The combination of austere regimes, strict sex segregation and constant surveillance effectively prohibited blind women from forming sexual relationships. Moreover, the emergence of the eugenics movement cultivated a social moral climate that viewed sex and marriage amongst blind people as morally repugnant. Prominent figures such as Dr T.R. Armitage actively sought to influence opinion towards intermarriage amongst blind people. Many opponents to blind people marrying cited blind women as carriers of hereditary blindness. These negative social attitudes towards blind women further secured their exclusion from reproductive and mothering roles.
Susan McGann (Royal College of Nursing, Edinburgh,
UK): The Private and Professional Lives of Nurses 1840 – 1960 c.1880-1930
During the nineteenth century, the process of secularisation within nursing meant that by the end of the century nursing had become the first mass profession for women in the English speaking world. However, there was a price to pay. Like their progenitors, the nursing nuns and the Protestant sisterhoods, nurses had to renounce family, private life and sexuality. Nursing offered middle class women an acceptable place in the workforce. Care of the sick bridged the distance between the home as the woman’s sphere and the hospital as a work place that was a home for the sick (Nelson 2001). Nurses, although they were part of the workforce, were also homemakers and housekeepers within the hospital or community. This paper will consider the professional lives of seven nurses, born between 1840 and 1860. By 1900 they had all reached key positions in nursing in Great Britain and Ireland. However, their personal lives illustrate the compromises which this generation of women had to make to pursue a career. Of the seven, only two married; of these two, one was widowed at the age of twenty-one and the other was separated from her husband for the majority of her life. Because nursing, more than any other work, became identified as a female occupation, it provides a particularly good example of the interplay of work, gender and religion. Sioban Nelson, Say Little do much: nursing, nuns and hospitals in the nineteenth century.
Sophie McGrath (Australian Catholic University): Australian Catholic Women's Relationship and Engagement with the Family, Private Life and Sexuality in the Early 20th Century
This paper explores the perceptions of the early 20th century Australian Catholic community concerning women's relationship and engagement with the family, private life and sexuality, which, broadly speaking, tend to be inextricably interrelated. The Australasian Catholic Congresses of 1900, 1904 and 1909 provide a rich source of material concerning the life of the Australian Catholic community in the early twentieth century. The 1900 Congress was designed to celebrate the commencement of the new millennium and the federation of the Colonial States into the Commonwealth of Australia. Happily the 1900 and subsequent Congresses, which extended for a week, provided the opportunity for a great number of people, including some women, to express their views publicly on a wide variety of subjects. We become aware of the attitudes and values, the hopes and fears, the tensions and factions, and the livid mores of this somewhat embattled community facing a new century. From the records it is known that the congresses were very well attended and almost half of the laity who attended were women. An analysis of the many papers presented at these congresses provides invaluable information, explicit as well as implicit, concerning women's relationship and engagement with the family, private life and sexuality in the Australian Catholic culture of the early twentieth century.
Yvonne McKenna (University of Limerick,
Ireland): Community Living and Individuality---Irish Women Religious
Reflect (1930s-1960s)
In the post-independence period, the number of Irish women entering religious life continued to rise, reaching a peak in the late 1960s, The sheer number of vocations amongst women in Ireland tends to be understood in the context of an economically depressed and socially conservative society in which, though esteemed as the `proper' path for women to follow, opportunities for marriage were limited. Little space is left for women religious' own subjectivity. In fact, despite their importance as cultural icons, very little is known about the actual experiences of women religious: though the image is often used, the voice is rarely, if ever, heard. This paper, which is based on oral histories collected from twenty Irish women religious, explores the women's experience of religious life with particular reference to the themes of family, privacy and sexuality. The women of this study were born in Ireland between 1910 and 1950 and entered active religious congregations between the 1930s and the 1960s, a period during which convent life was organised around a strict adherence to rules and regulations and presided over by the absolute authority of the superior. Although nuns had some contact with the laity through the work they did, this was limited and convents created and maintained physical and psychological barriers between themselves and the `outside'. This paper considers the extent to which leaving family (and often country) behind them, entering religious life for the women of this study represented an act of personal agency -- a claim to individuality and freedom from family and family obligations not generally available to Irish women. Or did religious life merely replace the family with another set of ties and obligations? By their very nature, active religious congregations might also be said to complicate the distinction between private and public. In addition, the paper explores what space, if any, was available within religious life for privacy: intellectual, mental and bodily privacy. In so doing, it raises questions about what exactly we mean by `private' in terms of both personal and domestic space. Finally, the area of sexuality is explored. Women religious during this period were regarded not only as `asexual', but often `gender neutral'. But how was this the case, when religious life continually marked nuns out precisely as women? Moreover, were the women assumed to be asexual or was it something they had to work towards through behaviour and expression? Drawing on the oral testimonies of Irish women religious, this paper goes some way in shifting the balance from icon to person, enabling the voices of nuns themselves to be heard.
Elizabeth McKenna (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland): 'My Hand The Needle Better Fits'
The aim of this paper is to examine the craft of embroidery in medieval Ireland in the general context of women's occupations. Both early laws and hagiography bear witness to the valued work of the diurnach or embroidress. Cloth was a major preoccupation for medieval women; women looked after the sheep, they teased the wool and spun it, they dyed the resulting yarn ad converted the yearn into cloth and the cloth into clothes. The production of garments inevitably led to their decoration by skilled needlewomen. This stage in garment production was regarded as a very suitable occupation for aristocratic women. Skill in needlework was regarded as a praiseworthy talent in both lay women and religious and even saints were praised for it. The needle of an embroidress was accepted as part of a woman's movable wealth, and merited, according to the law an unusually large pledge interest because of the earning capacity applicable to it owner. During the later medieval period, Bardic poets used to praise both the output of talented needle women and used the imagery of women sewing with fine and expensive materials to underline their idyllic surroundings. I propose by the use of available texts to examine the information which can be gleaned about this acceptable occupation for women of the upper classes and to set it in a European context.
Anne McKernan (The College of New Rochelle, USA):
Women and the Law in Early Nineteenth-century Ireland: the Case
for the Trust
Blackstone in his Commentaries
on the Laws of England stated the prevailing opinion on the legal status of
married women. The union of marriage, he stated, suspended the legal person
of the woman who was "covered" by her husband's legal person. All
contracts, conveyances and property were in his name; a married woman had no
control over her property, earnings, or children. Caroline Sheridan Norton challenged
the "principle of coverture" in the 1830s because it allowed her husband
to remove their children from her care without appeal. Legally, she was a phantom,
not a person. With no standing in the law, she had limited access to the courts
even though the Sheridan family had considerable social assets. This notorious
child custody case did gradually lead to legal reforms that recognized the rights
of married women over their children and property. This paper explores the realities
of women's legal status in 19th century Ireland before 1850. It asks, what access
did Irish women have to the courts? What legal mechanisms were used to provide
that access? How did families of origin balance the needs of their daughters'
futures with the integrity of the family property? It argues that law in Ireland
provided families with legal mechanisms to protect and support mothers, daughters
and sisters, even after marriage. Extensive research in the archives at the
Registry of Deeds in Dublin, the Public Record Offices (Dublin and Belfast),
and the Armagh Museum has uncovered a rich set of wills, marriage settlements,
land conveyances, and trusts for a moderate-size estate (7000 acres) in County
Armagh. The Richhill Estate database illustrates how the landlord and his tenants
across the socio-economic spectrum (yeomen, merchants, artisans, weavers) used
the law to protect women from greedy brothers, shrewd mortgage holders and would-be
heirs. The "trust" was frequently the mechanism used to provide women
access to the courts. Though trustees were male, women had control over property
held in trust. The paper will reconstruct how the three Richhill co-heiresses
(two unmarried and one married) operated the estate. It will also address the
case of Martha Tosh Walker, a Richhill gentleman's third wife, who set up a
trust to keep her property from her husband and his eleven children from previous
marriages. In no way does this study attempt to justify or explain away the
dubious legal standing of women in the courts. Rather, it intends provide some
insight into two issues: one, the family strategies Irish parents used to share
family resources with their children; two, how Irish law operated relative to
women before legal reform in 1857.
Richard McMahon (National University
of Ireland, Galway): Infanticide, The Courts and Legal Cultures
in Ireland, 1801-50
My paper examines both the incidence and prosecution of infanticide in early nineteenth century Ireland. Firstly, the incidence of infanticide reported by the police is examined in an effort to understand the motives and actions of those accused, the overwhelming majority of whom were women. Secondly, the prosecution of women is examined in an effort to explore contemporary attitudes, both legal and popular, to those women who were accused of infanticide, in particular, the attitudes of the police, prosecutors and juries. Through an examination of such prosecutions it is hoped that the paper will provide an insight into wider attitudes to women, the family and sexuality in nineteenth century Ireland.
Teresa Meade (Union College, New York, USA):
Bringing an Understanding of African, Asian and Latin American Women to the
US Classroom
One of the key challenges to the teacher and researcher of women's history
in the United States is to convince our audiences of the need to learn from
the experiences of other parts of the world. The arrogance of modern US society
has tended to create a triumphalist narrative of both the history of women's
liberation and the success of US families. Indeed, even in the face of a tremendously
high divorce rate, statistics on child neglect, domestic violence and abuse,
many Americans presume that life for US families, and women in them, has only
gotten better over the centuries. A key buttress to this assumption is a one-sided
appraisal of the status of women in the family in other parts of the world.
This paper outlines some views on the initiatives of African, Latin American
and Asian women for managing the public and private spheres of their respective
countries. Drawing on evidence that shows the historic role of women in the
domestic arena, as well as community leaders, the paper will discuss modern
day adaptations in the face of current problems. While careful not to romanticize
the difficulties women and men working on family care have faced, the paper
shows' the ways that experiences drawn from other parts of the world can be
presented to the US student population so as to highlight women as agents of
change, rather than victims.
Christine Meek (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland):
Sex and the Single Slave: Slaves, Their Owners and their Lovers
in Late Medieval Lucca
Slaves were a presence in many bourgeois households in late-medieval Italy. Overwhelmingly female and predominantly young and employed as domestic servants, their sexuality presented problems. Although manumission and even marriage were by no means impossible, they must have seemed distant prospects, and many slaves became involved in sexual liaisons. A single man who owned a slave probably automatically expected sexual services from her, but householders might have to face the problem of outsiders entering their house illicitly or even breaking in at night in order to sleep with a slave. A man who got another person's slave pregnant was obliged to compensate the owner and could be compelled to purchase the slave for twice what she had cost, should her owner wish to sell her. The child might be handed over to the father or sent to the foundlings' hospital, but the owner might choose to retain the slave and make use of her as a wetnurse for his own children or hire her out on a commercial basis. Probably the most serious problems arose when a married man became involved in sexual relations with his own slave, and this could result in the presence of slave-born children within a household along with the master's legitimate offspring. A few men even provided in their wills for this kind of co-residence to continue after their deaths. Slaves themselves were unlikely to be consulted about most of this, but they could sometimes make their wishes felt by taking to flight, attempting suicide, having recourse to magic or even plotting their owners' death.
Kari Melby (Norwegian University of Science and
Technology, Trondheim): The Nordic Model of Marriage
Between 1909 and 1929 the Marriage Acts were thoroughly reformed in all Nordic countries. What started as a Scandinavian initiative, laid the basis for a reform process in Finland and Iceland as well. The laws passed in all the Nordic countries enhanced women's individual rights and ended the husband's legal power of determination over his wife. Gender equality - though admittedly based on gender difference - emerged earlier in the Nordic countries than elsewhere in Europe. Secondly, the formation of marriage was reformed; and became more liberal but also more restrictive. Relationship by blood and marriage was not in the same degree as formerly, and as in other European countries, a bar to marriage. On the other side the minimum age of marriage for women was raised and there were more medical impediments. Thirdly, divorce was liberalized and no-fault divorce accepted, decades before European nations such as Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany accepted no-fault divorce around 1970. We may talk of a Nordic model of marriage. The paper will describe the reform and the Nordic collaboration which resulted in a uniform matrimonial legislation, and discuss why the Nordic countries did take an early lead in adopting marriage law reforms.
Cary Miller (University of Wisconsin, USA): William T. Boutwell and His Wives, a Story of Missionary-Anishinaabeg Cultural Confusion.
This presentation addresses cross-cultural confusions in the story of William T. Boutwell, born, raised, and educated in New England felt a strong missionary call to minister to the community of Leech Lake in Northern Minnesota in 1833. While there, Boutwell negotiated with the elderly sister of one of the chiefs concerning a piece of land upon which to build a schoolhouse and residence. A few days after the two reached an agreement, a young niece of the elderly woman, about 14 years of age arrived and said that her aunt had told her to come and stay with the missionary. While Boutwell congenially complied with what he understood as a request to instruct a child while boarding her as was done at other schools, the community likely saw the relationship in other ways. Boutwell's rather reserved journal does not go into details, but his lack of relationship with his guest became an issue when the rest of the community returned from their winter hunt. Another young male relative of the girl in question attempted to engage Boutwell in a conversation concerning whether or not he liked women, perhaps offering himself as an alternative. Chief Elder Brother, the brother of the woman from whom Boutwell purchased the land tried to smooth things over with the community without abrogating Boutwell's land request by adopting Boutwell, thus giving him an alternative claim on family property. Yet he scolds Boutwell for transacting a land purchase while the men were away. In Anishinaabeg society, land purchases must be requested from the community chiefs and headmen assembled in council. On the other hand, marriages were arranged with the senior women of the family by offering gifts in exchange for the match. Since marriage settlement patterns among Anishinaabeg peoples were usually matrilocal, at least for the first few years of marriage, Boutwell's request for use of family land combined with his elementary usage of Anishinaabeg language may easily have been misinterpreted by the elderly woman as a proposal.
Yuthika Mishra (Vivekananda College, India):
The Indian State and the Position of Women in the Family: A Study of the Hindu
Code Bill (1955-56)
Indian society is a picture of unity in diversity. This diversity is its historical
legacy and has nurtured various communities and religious groups within its
folds. Each community has its own personal laws and customs that mould the identity
of its followers. The Hindu Code Bill (HCB) was an attempt to bring about uniformity
among the hitherto scattered and uncoded religio – legal practices of
the Hindus, the majority community in India.
This paper attempts to analyze one of the several processes by which women’s
issues have been dealt with in India. Apart from the legal aspect the socio-
political factors have been studied in order to give a holistic picture of the
position of women in the family. The role of the state as the controller of
the legislative process has been examined. Above all its reluctance in espousing
the cause of the HCB has been analyzed in order to find out the forces and ideologies
at work behind the scenes. This came out very clearly in the controversy generated
by the HCB.
With the introduction of the 1921 resolution in the Imperial Legislative Assembly
demanding codification of the Hindu Law, a new chapter in the history of Hindu
family and marriage law reforms was added. While this demand was very limited
in its scope and pleaded only for written laws, the debates that took place
at this time highlighted the need for change in the personal laws in keeping
with the changing times.
In the 1930s some attempts were made to give women a share in the family property,
as till now they had none. But ultimately only a drastically altered law could
be passed in 1937 and that too was confined only to the widows. There were several
subsequent attempts to get a share for women in the family property but they
all reached a dead end. In the 1930s several women’s organizations such
as the Women’s India Association and the All India Women’s Conference
took up the cause of legal rights for women in a milieu which was charged with
political, nationalist overtones because of the ongoing freedom struggle. Several
pioneer women activists also exercised pressure on the Legislative Assembly
and Imperial Council members.
In 1941, the Rau Committee was appointed to look into the possibility of reform
of Hindu personal law concerning issues of succession, inheritance, separate
residence, maintenance and marriage. While the scope of the Committee was extended
in 1944, to include divorce and adoption issues, a division amongst the women’s
organizations arose over the issue of whether to support or boycott a government
appointed Committee since this was the time when the nationalist struggle was
in an intensive phase and freedom was round the corner.
However, the most hectic and intensive phase of HCB formulation started in 1948,
immediately after independence was attained. After a great deal of opposition
from orthodox public opinion the Bill was finally passed in 1955-56 after breaking
it into various sections and diluting many provisions of the original Bill.
The opposition to the Bill revealed the difficulty in bringing about changes
in personal laws through legal reform. Men who had supported women’s participation
in the freedom struggle were opposed to any changes in the patriarchal structure
of the family. The question of any further reforms of personal laws receded
into the background and so did the question of having a Uniform Civil Code for
different communities of the country. The state, in post-independence period,
took a stand of non- interference in the personal laws of minority communities
and the women’s issue got more and more entangled in the web of religion,
caste and class.
Here, an attempt has been made to highlight the fact that the subordination
of women in family and society has been a characteristic feature of personal
laws for obvious reasons. The need of the hour is to bring changes in these
laws. This may not be sufficient to alter the existing situation but if supported
by other measures and growing sensitivity to position of women in the society
in general, it may go a long way in changing the social status of women in the
family and community.
Angus Mitchell (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland): The Feminization of Roger Casement
This paper will explore two 'feminist' themes in the life of Roger Casement. On one side it will analyse his close intellectual relationship to several key Irish women included in the national independence movement - Alice Stopford Green, Agnes O'Farelly, Alice Milligan, Eve Gore-Booth. On the other, it will interrogate his own sense of 'gender' and argue that Casement's exploration of the 'feminine' threatened the predominant male attitudes of the British Empire before the First World War. In constructing Casement as a 'new' / 'womanly' man the paper will ultimately examine how his progressive and deeply sympathetic attitudes to the women's movement were turned against him in his sexualised construction and public demonization.
Godisang Mookodi (University of Botswana): Marriage
for Maize Meal and Other Survival Strategies of Female Low Income Householders
in Gabarone
Much of the literature on poverty primarily focuses on low economic status of households that are primarily supported by never-married women, widows, divorced and deserted women. Studies in Botswana identify high age dependency ratios as the key cause of poverty within single-women households. Linked closely to the dependency ratios is women's lower participation in wage labour and limited access to resources. Another factor that is cited in the literature is the lack of financial support from fathers of children. My paper presents the findings of a study on the gender dynamics of survival in low-income households in Gaborone (capital city of Botswana). The accounts of women indicated the importance of individual agency in the assessment of poverty and life chances. It was evident from the discussions that many of the households had problems that prevented them from meeting their basic needs. The problems most frequently cited by women were financial constraints due to limited income generating opportunities; and providing for children. Some of the survival strategies that the women employed included interalia; engaging in low-paying `piece jobs', relying on assistance from extended families, friends and neighbours, destitute assistance from government and NGOs. Some women also negotiated theirs and their children's existence by engaging in `marriage for maize-meal' - cohabiting essentially for purposes of survival. This particular survival strategy places women in paradoxical positions between autonomy and dependence.
Isabel Moreton (Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK): Prison and The Family in Ancien Régime France: The Case of The Maison de Force at the Salpêtrière
The Hôpital général in Paris was founded in 1656. It was not a hospital in the modern sense, but an amalgamation of several institutions, the largest being the Salpêtrière, the Pitié and Bicêtre. The Hôpital général provided charitable assistance to the poor and incurably sick, as well as facilities for locking up beggars and vagrants. The Salpêtrière specialised in the incarceration of women and children, holding up to 8,000 inmates at a time. One key section of the Salpêtrière, and the focus of this proposed paper, was its maison de force, or prison, which was founded in the 1680s. The first official regulations specified that its main function was to house and correct prostitutes and also girls whose behaviour was deemed to have been improper by their parents or guardians. Later, its remit expanded to include a whole range of criminal women, the general perception being that the maison de force housed those who had been rejected by society as a whole, as well as by their families. I aim to contrast those cases in which the women were the victims of their own relatives with those who were actively supported by their families. I will begin with a brief demographic analysis of the types of women who were being incarcerated, and look at which authorities were ordering their admission. These included the police, courts like the Parlement, and women sent by Ordre du Roy or via the hospital’s own administration, at the request of their families. This will indicate that the use of the prison by relatives was far less common than has been thought. I will then examine the cases of women who were the victims of their relatives; often but not necessarily their parents or husbands, and look at what they were accused of (generally debauchery and libertine behaviour). Naturally, the outlook for these women was bleak when they left the hospital; as their families had cast them out, they were unlikely to have a home and support when they returned, which as some contemporaries realised, made them more likely to turn to crime when they left. In stark contrast to these cases, there is also evidence suggesting that in spite of their alleged crimes or misdemeanours, many prisoners sent by other authorities felt that they could rely on family to support them when they were freed from prison. I will look at cases in which families actively campaigned for their relative’s release, whether the woman was needed as an economic asset or portrayed as an innocent and helpless girl who simply fell in with the wrong crowd. There is also evidence that in some cases women arrived with relatives, suggesting that they had committed crimes together; in others, it is known that their accomplices were husbands or lovers although these were sent to other prisons. This demonstrates that the role of the family was fairly pivotal; those women who were entirely without family support were often perceived as the most vulnerable. Finally, I will look at how the prison affected young mothers, either those who arrived at the prison with young children, or who gave birth at the Salpêtrière. In these cases, the children were generally taken away from the mother and sent to other sections of the hospital or to the countryside to be wet-nursed. Horrendous death rates amongst these children ensured that most mothers probably never saw their children again, suggesting that in these cases, the authorities took over responsibility, usually with disastrous effects. I will conclude by summarising the impact of the maison de force on family life and the life of women in Ancien Régime France.
Cecilia Morgan (OISE/University of Toronto, Canada): Private Lives and Public Performances: Aboriginal Women in Neo-Colonial Canada, 1920s-1960s
This paper will explore the links between the private lives and public performances of two Iroquois women, Bernice Loft (1902-1997?) And Ethel Brant Monture (1894-1977). While examining the lives of two individual women, the paper will go beyond a biographical approach to explore issues such as the interactive and mutually constitutive nature of gendered relations of ‘private’ and ‘public.’ Furthermore, it will point to the complications that arise when these relationships take place within the framework of a neo-colonial, ‘white settler’ society such as Ontario. The paper draws upon relevant Canadian literature on Native-white relations, feminist work on the importance of understanding women’s private lives, and feminist scholarship on gender and colonialism (particularly that which examines the impact of colonialism and imperialism on what Ann Stoler calls the ‘intimate domains’ of familial life, sexuality, childbearing and rearing, and subjectivity). Both Loft and Monture worked as lecturers and performers in Ontario; they appeared (sometimes together) in front of women’s organizations, church groups, community associations, and, in the case of Loft, girls’ summer camps as living embodiments of Iroquois history, culture, and ‘tradition.’ Loft and Monture also published a number of works on the history and spiritual practices of the Iroquois. Both women lived and worked in the interstices of Native-Euro-Canadian societies: while born and raised on the Six Nations reserve at the Grand River in Ontario, they also spent many years living in urban centres in southern Ontario and the north-eastern United States, while at the same time maintaining physical, socio-cultural, and emotional links to the Grand River territory. There is a considerable amount of published material that attests to the public construction of Loft and Monture as Iroquois women in the context of a neo-colonial society. However, Loft and Monture also led complex but difficult private lives, particularly around questions of family responsibilities, sexuality, and female friendships. Their private lives intersected in a number of ways with their public personas, both forging and being forged by the latter. Loft’s work as a ‘public performer’ created, she felt, certain tensions within the Six Nations community, ones that to some extent led her to cultivate an intense personal friendship with a non-Native woman; as well, her marriage to a non-Native man also propelled her into non-Native society at a very intimate and personal level that she experienced with varying degrees of ambivalence. Monture, in contrast, in 1933 left husband and two children on Six Nations to live, work, and travel in southern Ontario and upstate New York; she too developed a close friendship with a British-Canadian woman, the Coleridge scholar Kathleen Coburn. The correspondence between these Native and non-Native women, then, provides a wealth of insights into the tensions in Loft and Monture’s private lives as Iroquois women who, in their public personas, were obliged to enact gendered, colonial performances of ‘Iroquois womanhood.’ Moreover, these letters also provide insights into their relationships with the white women who acted as their friends, their confidants, and, to no small extent, their patrons.
Susan Morgan (University College Chichester, UK): Commentary: Perspectives on Religion, Gender and Family Life
In 1888 the Daily Telegraph published a series of articles entitled ‘Is Marriage a Failure?’ and asked readers to comment. Some 27,000 letters were received by the editor. This lively response typified the popular ‘debate over marriage’ which reached a peak during the late 1880s and 1890s, stimulated by daily news of conjugal discord from the new divorce courts, the outcry over prostitution, the unabated problem of ‘redundant women’ and shifting definitions of masculinity and the domestic role. As this paper will show, female moral reformers’ readings of marriage during this period exhibited a complex synthesis of religious and feminist principles as they shifted their focus from prostitution and male sexual abuse to the more sensitive area of private marital relations between wife and husband. Construed by the Church as a bulwark against the prevailing climate of ‘sexual anarchy’, marriage was simultaneously subjected to a variety of criticisms by Christian women activists who raised a number of pertinent issues relating to the dynamics of sexual power within marriage and women’s right to bodily autonomy. Central to this controversial agenda was the advocacy of a single moral standard which hinged upon the regulation and control of the male sexual imperative. In a vast number of tracts and pamphlets, speeches and essays, women reformers directed their efforts towards the real culprits of marital sexual immorality - men. In the process, whilst always prioritising the procreative aspect of matrimony, women rejected all forms of coercive, non-consensual sex and defended women’s right to say no. In addition, by endowing the sexual act with sacramental properties sanctioned by the authoritative weight of the Christian tradition, many of these religious feminist writings provided an acceptable way for women to engage in sexual pleasure, and thus such writings represent a subtle but perceptible shift in the defining of female sexuality from a passive to a more active mode.
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Theresa Moriarty (Irish Labour History Museum,
Dublin): Under the Public Gaze: Vice, Virtue and Dublin's Working
Women, 1900-20
At the end of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the last century, working women came under the unprecedented gaze of a range of public observers, especially in industrialised countries. Women's domestic skills had been increasingly industrialised in workplace and home production, admitting them to the officially enumerated labour force. Their low pay, long hours and poor working conditions, excluded them from full public recognition, or acceptance, as wage earners. This paper would attempt to show how contemporary observers responded to women's new visibility. This public gaze put working women under scrutiny, at work, within community, and in their family, domestic and sexual lives.
Miho Morioka (Chuo University, Japan): Cio-Cio-san as a Hybrid - Some Phases of Epistemological Histories in David Pountney's Production of Madama Butterfly
Opera, one of the representative arts, inevitably includes in it plural viewpoints
to what is written in its text: firstly, that of its creator's ( composers and
librettists )at the time of its genesis, and then that of its director's at
the time of its performance --- and of course, of its audience's. Through `reading'
the stage from the standpoints of our time, we can find various phases of epistemological
histories at owe in an opera performance. In this presentation, I will analyze
the stage representation of David Pountney's production of Madama Butterfly
( premiered in 1995, Bunkamura, lbkyo, Japan) and make visible particular configurations
of political and epistemological discourses in it, especially in terms of Orientalism,
of gender and of the question of national identities. As its designer Ralph
Cortay says in the program, elaborate decors of each act splendidly display
how its protagonists, Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-san, recognize the world, as well
as their psychological states at each scene. The stage of act I is a decorative
realization of Orientalist vision of Pinkerton, as a representative of the Westerners
living in the era of Imperialism. Their power of domination is represented through
acts of "framing" the Japanese people as their objects and making
them ummovable and unchangeable. Nevertheless, there are also seen some figures
of Japanese women contesting with the overwhelming power. The set of act II
is a house of Cio-Cio-san, bleak and shabby, but with many American cheap commodities;
this mise-en-scene represents her self-contained daydream as a dutiful wife
of the American sailor and actual miserable situation of herself in the confusingly
mixed state. She does not remain a simple victim, but chooses to adjust herself
into a kind of productive discourse in accordance with the hegemonic power:
a typical adaptation of the weak ones who want to survive under the great power.
Her fantasy is, however, thoroughly frustrated with the man whom she believes
as her husband. Pinkerton, at last facing to what he himself committed, is to
suffer the devastating collapse in his own internalized understanding of "Asian»
"woman", who were once categorized as easily exploitable and knowable
to him without care. In this sense, Madama Butterfly can be read as a narrative
of serious destruction of the internalized world-vision of P inkerton as the
Western Man, beyond a traditional sentimental version of true love story of
Cio-Cio-san the victimized Japanese woman. As for the last scene, where Cio-Cio-san
kills herself with Japanese knife and drunken Pinkerton Is astonished with this
shocking sight as well as with sudden slaps by his American wife, we can make
two interpretations. One is that, as mentioned above, this is the scene of severe
subversion suddenly thrust by others to the Western adult man, that is, by an
Asian, a woman and a child. Considering this scene in current post-colonial
discourses, however, the more controversial interpretation is also available.
This is potentially the scene of a critical challenge toward the stable national
identities, through Butterfly, who, having longed for being an American, has
mimicked the American way of thinking of Asia so perfectly as to perform a `mysterious
Japanese' as they understand, at the end of her own life. She can be found neither
a pure Japanese nor an American, but a hybrid who deconstructs the established
notion of national identities itself.
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Miranda Morris (University of Tasmania): In
the Bosom of the Family: the Ambiguous Position of an Immigrant Servant
In 1858 Alice Gordon, servant, arrived in Tasmania as a single female bounty immigrant. An editorial covering the arrival of her ship urged prospective employers to act in loco parentis to these ‘motherless girls.’ In this paper I want to explore the way in which this idea – that employers of immigrants constituted both home and family - informed the relationship between Alice Gordon and Dr. And Mrs Crowther both within and beyond the period of her service with them. I want to examine Alice Gordon’s uneasy position as daughter/servant which required her to be a moral role model as well as a subservient member of the household. Her position as nursery governess placed her in the heart of the household. It was a place Colonial Tasmanians perceived as particularly vulnerable, evoking as it did anxieties about the recent convict past and vipers in the bosom of the family. In this context I look at how the Crowthers became both responsible for, and wedded to the idea of, Alice Gordon’s virtue. This belief is central to their continued involvement in the life of Alice Gordon, manifesting first in her appointment as Matron of the Girls’ Industrial School, managed by a Ladies’ Committee headed by Mrs. Crowther. Here Alice Gordon took on the in loco parentis role, but also became complicit in replicating her position as servant through the moral regulation and physical training of neglected girls. In the final part of this paper I want to look at the role of the Crowthers during Alice Gordon’s trial for perjury. Twenty-one years after her arrival in the colony as a motherless girl, Dr. Crowther, now Premier of Tasmania, was prepared to compromise his political career to defend Alice Gordon’s virtue in public.
Barbara Mortimer (Queen Margaret University College,
Edinburgh, Scotland): The Private and Professional Lives of Nurses
1840 - 1960
This paper traces the lifestyles of women who earned their living as midwives or nurses in and around the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the mid-nineteenth century. These women had to devise a range of ways to balance their domestic and professional responsibilities. The lives and careers of a large sample of nurses and midwives have been traced. All the practitioners considered in this paper were employed privately and they carried out their work in their clients’ homes. The people who employed these ‘medical women’ included a sophisticated and demanding group of citizens who often employed well-known physicians or surgeons when they were ill. Two different female professional life styles are discerned. Midwives served a client group that lived near to the practitioner’s home. The midwife could attend and support a number of female clients concurrently. This might involve the midwife attending her client all night during labour and delivery, but at the end of each episode of professional attendance the midwife returned to her own home and family. There she was able to fulfil her responsibilities as a wife, mother, daughter, aunt and householder while still carrying out her professional duties. Successful women in this position appear to have sustained a comfortable life style and seem to have been respected in their community. However, the number of women who worked in this way declined steadily in Scotland in the period examined in this paper (1851-1861). A contrasting lifestyle has been traced for another group of women whose presence is particularly visible within the city. Here, an increasing number of women were attracted to work as a ‘sick nurse’ or ‘lady’s nurse’. They particularly valued the work of a ‘monthly nurse’, caring for privileged women around the time of their labour and delivery. In this pattern of working the ‘nurse’ (sometimes still described as a midwife) was employed by a single client or patient and she resided in her patient’s home for the entire period of her employment. For substantial periods of time this practitioner could not return home to her domestic responsibilities, she was confronted with the necessity of finding alternative ways of managing her home life. The paper demonstrates strategies employed by women in this situation and proposes some explanations of the evolving labour practices of domiciliary nurses and midwives.
Marianna Mouravieva (Herzen State Pedagogical University, Russia): Deconstructing the Body:Surgical and Sexual Penetration as the Ways of Exercising the Power (Comparative attitudes to Rape in early modern England and Russia)
We often separate all kinds of medical penetration practices and sexual penetration actions, which could be in the form of rape and any other non-consensual penetration or just in a form of having sex (or making love). But it is very interesting to find any similarities between all these penetrations: every action is based on the notion of power. We can trace this attitude in early modern times very clearly. This presentation is designed to show the different interpretation of surgical treatises written in XVI century (e.g. Treatise of chyrurgerie by John Banister (1540-1610) and the action of rape (both hetero- and homosexual). I wouldn’t make any conclusions in advance for the power of interpretation could vary, but here are some points to consider. Surgery as profession was perceived in those days as some form of a witchcraft (both in negative and positive sense). Rape as a crime was attributed to the same faculty (as Court of Arches records show). The notion of power is crucial here because one of its main features was the ability to penetrate somebody or something in order to satisfy the desire of power. Passive and active homosexuality is one of the ways to exercise it. The Dominance of a Man over a Woman was supported with the capability of a Man to penetrate. Women supposedly couldn’t do it. They couldn’t be surgeons (only midwives) and they were excluded from power. All this connections might be very important in understanding the gender system and sexuality in XVI-XVII centuries. I picked up Russia and England as two distinct cultures where the discourse of rape as well as medical discourse was considered in different ways. In England rape was a crime of violence, it was conducted against the person’s right. In Russia rape was a crime against ‘morality,’ collective honour (family usually represented the collective honour), and there was no such a notion as right. But the attitudes to rape have a lot in common, which makes us think over the cultural roots of rape again.
Marie Mulholland (Gay Community News, Dublin, Ireland): The Struggle to Name
"..the loneliness of coming back, with no Madeline to greet me and say what a barren wilderness it had been while I was away." (Kathleen Lynn diary extract, 5th June 1944) In writing a biography of Dr Kathleen Lynn (1874-1955) the struggle to name the relationship between Kathleen and her partner Madeline ffrench-Mullen became central to the task of writing her biography. This was not because there is no name for their relationship but because the criteria applied in the examination of women's historical relationships is constructed to define those relationships as everything but lesbian.The criteria relies mainly on the examination of context and conditions of women's lives and where available primary documentary evidence. The absence of documentary evidence of women's sexual relationships with each other is read as proof of the non-sexual nature of such relationships despite as Donoghue (1993) argues that the lack of surviving personal papers can point to the subjects desire for privacy and discretion as well as to the censoring actions of families and scholars. Yet even where it does exist biographers have strenuously refused to read it as a signifier of a lesbian relationship (Lewis, 1988, Ruane 2001) This paper will argue that behaviour needs to be given appropriate weight as a signifier to the nature of relationships between women and can be used as a lens through which primary source material can be read. Whilst the articulation of lesbian identity and consciousness is to some extent a late 20th century development, lesbian behaviour is timeless and universal. By examining the choices and responses of women like Kathleen Lynn within their social, political, spiritual and cultural contexts patterns of behaviour identifiable as lesbian can be recognised in her life and defined in her diaries.
Susan Mumm (The Open University, UK): Domestic
Death and Emotional Labour: Religion, Community, and Family in the Lives of
Victorian Women
This paper will discuss religious influences on Victorian women as they explored
their roles in and beyond the nuclear family in the second half of the nineteenth
century. It focuses on an important religious and cultural innovation: the development
of sisterhoods within the Established church. Sisterhoods renegotiated the demands
for emotional labour made on women in their domestic roles, dramatically reducing
the need to perform 'emotion work' as public work became available to them.
Sisterhoods were denounced by cultural commentators as undermining family life
and paternal authority. They were regarded with hostility by the Church as 'unexploded
mines' that might endanger the very existence of Anglicanism. Both society and
church saw sisterhoods as dangerous in the opportunity they gave for large numbers
of Victorian women to live lives that looked beyond home and family. At the
same time that these groups were being decried and deplored, women were pouring
into an ever-increasing number of them. This paper explores the advantages of
community life as an alternative to family life for Victorian women, focusing
on their emotional lives.
Maureen O. Murphy (Hofstra University, New York)
This paper will examine family structure and emigration in one parish in the midlands between 1881 and 1921. My hypothesis is that there are certain changes in family structures which triggered the emigration of daughters.
Hiroko Nagano (Chuo University, Japan): The World of the "Haifuyanagidaru" Collection of Poems: The Discourse Concerning Women in Early Modern Japan
In the early modem period in Japan women were discussed and talked about without
end in all manner of different areas, starting first with the various diversified
literary genres, and stretching to other artistic fields such as Kabuki, Joruri
puppet theatre and Ukiyoe woodblock art. The Senryu style of poetry began in
the latter half of the eighteenth century in Edo, the old name for the capital,
Tokyo. Senryu poems have the same structure as Haiku, in that they consist of
three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively, but they do not require such
conventions as seasonal words and special words or inflexions to denote the
end of a line that are demanded in Haiku. Moreover, whereas the content of Haiku
tends to be centred on Nature, Senryu poems focus on the affairs of human society
and human nature, and characteristically include elements of parody, frivolity,
and humour. The name "Senryu" came from the name of the founder of
this particular style of poetry, Senryu Karai. Practitioners of this style generally
belonged to a group or circle and would practice at monthly poetry meetings.
There they would also receive instruction from an adjudicator or judge who would
also act as the leader of the group. In that sense, Sen;ryu was not simply an
art form that was there to be enjoyed alone, it also had with it a strong element
of being a pastime to take part in as a group. In terms of their social position
or ranking, the practitioners, including the adjudicator, were on the whole
townspeople or middle and lower ranking retainers of the Shogunate government,
and tended to be overwhelmingly male. As a result, at these monthly poetry meetings,
there must have been quite a male homo social atmosphere prevalent - in other
words social bonding among men. In fact, the "Haifuyanagidaru" itself
was published as a carefully chosen selection of poems from the "Senryuhyo
Mankuawase," which was a collection of poems chosen by Senryu Karai himself,
and the publishers and editors were all nien. In the male world of the "Haifuyanagidaru"
Senryu poetry in the latter half of the eighteenth century, women were talked
about and discussed without limit or boundaries; I will talk about the unique
characteristics concerning the way in which women were treated that is evident
in this style of poetry.
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Georgeta Nazarska (International Centre of Minority
Studies and Inter-Cultural Relations, Sofia, Bulgaria): The Family
and the Higher Education of Bulgarian Women (From the End of the Nineteenth
to the Middle of the Twentieth Century)
This paper will present the statistical facts from a larger research project on higher educated Bulgarian women in the period from the establishment of the Bulgarian modern state (1878) until the end of the Second World War. The data from archives and published sources has been framed in a statistical way and historical commentary has been added to the analysis. The survey can also be compared with the facts from a similar survey for a previous epoch – that of the Bulgarian Renaissance from the 18th to the end of the 19th centuries which marks the transition of the Bulgarian nation from the Middle Ages towards the modern period.
Nordica Nettleton (University of Glasgow, Scotland):
The Role of Blat in the Lives of Soviet Women
One must have not 100 rubles but 100 friends. (Soviet saying)
This study aims to provide a description of the role of blat in the lives of women in the Soviet Union. Blat is a distinctly Russian term that translates poorly into English; it is best understood as a friendly process of ‘give and take’ that occurs over an indeterminate period of time. As an informal and ubiquitous survival technique, blat was a powerful social mechanism that existed outside of the official policies, provisions, and controls of the Communist government. The usage of blat by women illustrates the limitations or deficiencies of the state, notably during periods of unrest, and women’s subsequent responses. It constitutes the use of the family and private relationships to fill a public void. In analysing this topic some questions that arise are: in which circumstances was blat employed and when was it perceived to be acceptable? What was the nature of the ‘us and them’ relationship formed by women participating in these transactions? The basis of the study is an analysis of the life stories of women born before or around the time of the October Revolution in 1917. As the interviews were conducted after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the life stories contain examples of the use of blat and the state throughout the entire existence of the Soviet Union. Blat, often interpreted as human kindness, was present in Soviet patterns of social behaviour, and remnants of these patterns, and a mourning of their decline, are significant aspects of contemporary Russian society.
Beryl
Nicholson (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK): Women
who shared a husband: polygyny in Southern Albania in the early twentieth century
Polygyny has been practised in several parts of south-east Europe until quite
recently, and not confined to the muslim population, but remarkably little has
been written about it. This paper looks at women in polygamous marriages, in
a hill area of southern Albania. It uses data from the manuscript of a census
taken in Albania in 1918 by the occupying Austro-Hungarian army, informed by
sparse written sources and field research on life in the present. Though polygamous
marriages were in a minority, they were still in excess of five percent of all
existing marriages at the time of the census. Women tended to marry early, and
many men married late. Mortality was high, many people, men as well as women,
were widowed at some time, and married more than once. So it is likely more
women experienced polygamy for part of their lives. Explanations suggested for
taking a second wife include childlessness, which is a possibility in some cases,
though the data are inconclusive. Local people say men had two wives because
they were rich, but not all rich men did. Circumstantial evidence, notably the
absence of the institution of farm servants in this muslim society, suggests
it may also have been related to ensuring an adequate household labour supply.
There is little indication of how the women themselves (or anyone else) saw
their situation, but accounts from other societies suggest they found it far
from ideal. All women in this society led hard, even painful, lives, but for
women in polygamous marriages it was undoubtedly harder than most.
Helen Nicholson (Manchester Metropolitan University,
UK): Testing the Norms: Georgina Weldon's Alternative Family.
On 15th April 1878, Georgina Weldon was forced to barricade herself in her room in order to avoid being captured and incarcerated in a lunatic asylum at the request of her husband. For Weldon, this signalled the beginning of her campaign to reform both the lunacy laws and the marriage laws; a campaign which took place in the courtroom, on the stage and in the pages of the national press. Inevitably the campaign involved the public examination of her marriage and relationships as she sought to answer allegations that she had had an affair with the composer Charles Gounod and was also conducting a lesbian relationship with a Frenchwoman called Angèle Ménier. In answer to these accusations, in 1882 she sued her husband for restitution of conjugal rights, and then proceeded to make him a laughing stock by singing about it in the London music halls. Weldon and her husband Henry has separated in 1875, and during the intervening period she had established an orphanage in the couple's London home, Tavistock House, and begun living there, initially with both Angèle Ménier and her husband Anacharsis and subsequently with just Angèle and the orphans. From 1876 to 1879 Georgina Weldon and Angèle Ménier had an intense relationship which they were not afraid of exposing to public scrutiny. They appeared publicly as a couple, dressed in matching outfits and Angèle is even described in a profile of Weldon that appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette. Drawing on the details of her disastrous marriage, her public campaigns, courtroom appearances and stage performances, this paper will consider Georgina Weldon's changing relationship to the concept of family, private life and sexuality. Weldon's unusual life will also be considered alongside examples of other women during the period who were able to create alternative family structures.
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Harriet Nkomazana (Anglia Polytechnic University,
UK): Stretching the Female Genital Flaps for Sexual Pleasure
Sarah Bartmann or Saat Jee, a servant of a Dutch farmer near Capetown was brought
to London exhibition at Piccadilly in 1810. Known to the English and the European
neighbourhood as "Hottentot Venus" Saat Jee attracted various crowds
from different parts of London. They were fascinated by this creature who straddled
that dreaded boundary between human and animal. They were amazed and affrighted
by this sight of her naked body with enlarged buttocks and enlarged genital
flaps. The people in London and Europe thought these genital flaps were naturally
long; little did they know that they had been stretched. This information has
triggered me to research into the History of the Hottentots and the Bush women
and the connection of their customs to the Ndebele/Zulu women. My interest and
area of focus is the origin and source of stretching the genital flaps (labia
minora) which is a prevalent custom in Africa sub-Sahara. Stretching the labia
minora is done to enhance sexual pleasure. Also in this paper I aim to look
at herbs and other substances that are used to constrict the vagina for sexual
pleasure. Traditionally, these are ways of strengthening marriages in the African
culture. The question is; Were these white western male anthropologists aware
of genital stretching? Or were they driven by an ambition to support and substantiate
their own existing theories that African women's anatomy was biologically deformed,
hence proving that African women were inherently of an inferior status? This
is a Historical, Sociological and Anthropological research which calls me to
visit the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and the Anthropology
Department at the University of Cambridge.
Lisa Norling (University of Minnesota, USA): "Sister Sailors" and Sex at Sea: The Impact of American Captains' Wives on Maritime Sexuality, 1840-1880
In a practice that became more common in the 1840s and peaked in the late nineteenth
century,. hundreds (perhaps thousands) of wives of captains in the New England
whalefishery and merchant marine accompanied their husbands to sea. The "sister
sailors" were unusual among their contemporaries, traveling thousands of
miles around the globe on voyages that might last years at a time. In deciding
to join their captain-husbands--the only men allowed by the shipowners to bring
their wives to sea--these women made excruciating choices between what they
understood to be their conjugal duty on the one hand, and family and community
expectations on the other. Once at sea, they found themselves isolated and confined,
cut off from networks of family and female friends on shore, the only woman
in all-male workplaces. While some women clearly relished their adventures,
many others found their lives at sea and abroad to be uncomfortable, lonely,
boring, and alienating.
Though popular interest in the stories of these "sister sailors" has
persisted since their own time, there have been very few serious scholarly studies.
And in the work that does exist (including my own), there is no focused examination
of one of the most interesting and historically illuminating elements of their
experiences at sea: their sexual lives. Most of the seagoing women almost never
mentioned sex explicitly in their shipboard journals, and even historians interested
in the topic have felt reluctant to hazard speculation with so little evidence.
However, by reading these journals carefully, between the lines and against
the grain, and further by juxtaposing them with the official logbooks, shipboard
journals kept by men, family and business correspondence, missionary records,
and other local and industrial documentation, we can begin to reconstruct the
physically intimate relationships of these women and also the impact of their
presence on the dynamics of authority and fraternity among the crew on shipboard
and in foreign ports.
This paper will explore how, by accompanying their husbands to sea, the captains'
wives prioritized their spousal relationship over other family connections and
responsibilities; gave up daily interaction with parents, siblings, older children,
and friends; and focused their social and emotional lives almost exclusively
on their husbands. I argue that the intensified conjugality, the confines of
the ship, and the absolute authority of their captain-husbands over vessel and
crew, both structured and inflated the sexual dimension of the seagoing wives'
identities. The captain's exclusive right to marital intimacy at sea sharpened
the division and introduced new sources of friction between captain and crew,
as the wife's presence generated new heteroerotic tensions and disrupted homoerotic
dynamics on shipboard. Although generally objectified by captain and crew alike,
some women resisted in part through attempting to discourage the short-term
sexual liaisons with local women to which most sailors felt entitled during
calls in foreign ports. .
Lisa
Oberg (Sodertorns Hogskola University, Sweden):
Midwifery and Maternity Care in the US, Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden:
A Comparative Perspective on 19th and 20th Century Developments
In the second half of the nineteenth century midwifery had a “pretty bad press in Britain and an appalling one in the United States (US). It was only in North-West Europe that a tradition existed of systems of maternity care in which midwives played a central and valued role” Addressing these two ends of the spectrum this paper focuses on two north-west European countries, Sweden and the Netherlands, and on Britain and the US in the period from the middle of the last century until World War II. This paper offers a bird eye’s view of the recent historical developments in midwifery as an occupation. Such developments in midwifery can only be understood in the light of (1) developments in medicine in general and those in obstetrics in particular; (2) the development of the other occupations related to midwifery, such as medical doctors, nurses and maternity home care assistants; and (3) the wider social and economic developments such as the growth of the (welfare) state.
Alison Oram (University College Northampton, UK):
“Women Who ‘Wed’ Each Other”: Female Husbands in the British Popular Press
from the 1930s to the 1950s
In 1946 when Ellen Young was prosecuted for passing as a man to marry Irene Palmer, the Daily Herald and The News of the World suggested that she had been able to deceive her wife with sexual techniques learned from an older woman during a stint in Holloway prison. Yet the Daily Express carried absolutely no mention of the sexual facts of the case in reporting the same story, instead treating the wedding as a bizarre but entertaining masquerade. We know little about how lesbian sexuality was understood by ordinary working-class and lower middle-class people in the mid twentieth century. Reports of cross-dressing women in the popular press give us some access to publicly available discourses about same-sex relationships. In this paper I focus on stories where cross-dressing women had wives or girlfriends to examine how the possibility of desire and sexuality between two women was presented in the press and how this shifted between the 1930s and 1950s. Stories of women passing as men to commit crimes, go to war and marry other women were a staple feature of the British popular press well into the mid twentieth century. These representations relate to a long tradition of gender masquerade in English popular culture, from nineteenth century ballads about women soldiers and sailors to male impersonators in music hall. While apparently turning sex/ gender relations upside down, cross-dressed women, even female husbands, were absorbed into this tradition to become part of the entertainment function of the mass circulation press. Historians have suggested that new scientific and medical ideas about gender, sexuality and sexual deviance were having an increasing influence on public perceptions of lesbianism (female inversion) from the interwar period, especially after the prominent trial of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928. Yet there were few direct hints of lesbian sexuality in the reports of passing women well into the 1940s. Female husbands could still be represented as fascinating eccentrics, their motives primarily economic or emancipatory. Reports continued to emphasise theatrical elements, describing the cross-dresser’s clothing and his/ her success in playing the part of a man in the workplace and neighbourhood. It was only after World War Two that cross-dressing began to be frequently discussed using sexual or medical concepts. By the 1950s gender identity confusion, or transsexuality, was one of these discourses. A female husband told the magistrate at his/ her trial in 1954 that s/he considered himself to be a man and had tried to obtain “sex change” treatment. Readers of the popular press were also now assumed to have some knowledge of lesbianism (expressed in such terms as ‘unnatural passions between women’). While there appears to have been a discursive shift from innocent entertainment to sexual knowledge, from the theatrical model of women’s cross-dressing to a medical/ scientific one, the latter did not necessarily supersede the former. This paper will seek to problematise the change and examine the interplay between the two approaches. Were the wider possibilities of transformation and fantasy in women’s cross-dressing still apparent within modern psycho-sexual frameworks? To what extent did the latter simply reframe older concepts from popular culture such as ‘hermaphrodism’? What do these tropes tell us about the different experiences of cross-dressing and the identities involved?
Alison Oram (University College Northampton, UK) The Sexual Dynamics of History - A Retrospective. The Impatience of Feminist History
See Barbara Brookes
Ann-Catrin Östman (Åbo Academy University,
Finland): Mothers and Peasants - Agrarian Femininity as a Symbol
for Regional Identity
In this paper I am focussing on notions of agrarian femininity in a Swedish-speaking area, Ostrobothnia, in Western Finland in the early 20th century. Feminist writing on nationalism has focused on the gendering of national symbols and imagery: women are often constructed as the symbolic form of nations. In much of the research on nations, a clear distiction is drawn between civic nationalism and cultural nationalism - between groups constructed around cultural, ethnic and/or linguistic aspects on the one hand, and around the state and citizenship on the other. In the second form, gender is connected to the construction of the group and its boundaries, and women are often controlled as the biological reproducers. The paper studies the uses of gender in the construction of a regional identity. It also shows the relationship between gender and ethnic identities. I base my study on texts about rural women’s work published in regional Ostobothian newspapers. The paper covers the period 1900 to 1940, a time when agriculture was marked by many changes. At the same time new ethnic, regional and national identities were constructed. The agricultural work done by the women of Ostrobothnia constitutes the point de départ. As early as the 18th century the authorities regarded the workload of women in Ostrobothnia as excessive, but also in the early 20th century attention was drawn to the heavy field labour - harvesting, winnowing, ploughing the fields etc, etc. - performed by women. Ostrobothnia was characterized by an early dominance of small freehold peasants. The whole area lacked a local gentry, it had a complex rural economy and men often worked off the farms. At the same time as an increasing proportion of what was produced was sold, the centre of gravity in agricultural production moved from working the fields to animal husbandry. In the early 20th century the infant mortality - which had been extremely high in this region - declined. Until the 1930s there was a sex imbalance: the ratio of women to men was 125:100. In 1920 the Swedish-speaking minority amounted to 11 % (about 340.000 individuals) of the entire population in Finland. The Swedish-speaking population was heterogeneous and consisted of different groups. The majority lived in rural areas along the coast, but the upper-classes in Finland (aristocracy, civil servants, the bourgeoisie, the educated) had historically been Swedish-speaking. Between these groups - the upper classes and the intellectual élite on the one hand, and the common people on the other - bonds were made in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century the idea of a “Svenskfinland”, a Swedish-speaking nation on Finland, was constructed. The rural Swedes of Ostrobothnia constituted both a central and peripherical part of this “Swedish nation”. On the one hand they formed a marginal political, economical and social group. On the other hand the peasants were a strong symbol for Swedishness; they were made the heart of “Svenskfinland”. How were Ostrobothnian women described in ethic and regional terms? In the early texts they were often depicted as the peasants protecting and tendering the Swedish soil in the absence of men. Motherhood was not central in the early descriptions, but it in texts from the 1920´s and 1930´s are they presented as mothers giving birth to the Swedish “Volk”.
M Jose de la Pascua-Sanchez (University of Cadiz, Spain): Social Reproduction And Alone Women Households in Eighteenth Century Cadiz
Historians of the Family have often absorbed Talcott Parson's analysis of the modern nuclear family with its rigid gender division between men and women's roles. The acceptance of this model, has driven studies of the family -empirical and quantitative- towards a simple lineal story that traces the progress of this nuclear development. Research based on this perspective has ignored the dynamics of family relationships: kinship links but also how gender roles and economic activities change over time. By contrast, in this research, the objective is to analyze a particular vision of household and family from the perspective of the ‘individual trajectory’ of alone women in in the city of Cadiz during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Adele Perry (University of Manitoba, Canada): Legacies of Empire: Settler Feminism
and the Work of Frances Herring
The past decade has seen feminist historians reckon with the many legacies of imperialism. This paper will take up the questions raised by scholars like Antoinette Burton, Marilyn Lake, Mariana Valverde and Vron Ware through an examination Frances Elizabeth Herring. Herring was born in England in 1851, and immigrated to British Columbia, Canada, as a single woman in 1874. She mothered eight children, worked actively in feminist and social purity circles, had a relatively successful career as a journalist, and a more remarkable one as a novelist. Between 1900 and her death in 1916 she published six full-length novels, five of them romantic, popular works set in British Columbia in the last half of the nineteenth century. In this paper I will use Herring's novels to analyze what I will call settler feminism. I will argue that Herring married imperialism and first wave feminism, creating a potent mix with significant implications for the possibilities and limits of feminism into the twentieth century and beyond.
Jadwiga
Pieper (Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, USA): Local Actors,
National Policies, and Global Guidelines: Mortality, Morality, and Meanings
of Motherhood in Chile, 1952-1970
My paper places the roots of family planning in Chile in historical context and examines the way in which global, national, and local actors have shaped the first politics of fertility regulation under the Christian Democratic government of President Eduardo Frei M. (1964-1970). It illustrates that family planning initiatives in Chile began in response to female behavior. Women manifested their desire to limit births by recourse to self-induced abortion. Resulting high maternal death rates led to the development of a "pro-life" discourse: Chilean physicians equated promoting family planning with women's "right to live." Thus, women's actions prompted official initiatives that negotiated the meanings of moral behavior, motherhood, and the prevention of maternal mortality within existing cultural and political frameworks. Relying on a wide range of sources from educational films produced in the United States, Conference presentations defining a "northern population control agenda," and interviews with Chilean actors of the time, my paper sheds new light on a complex set of interactions. It introduces new perceptions of the limits of global northern voices in defining a southern policy agenda: in spite of powerful global paradigms, first defined by northern prescriptions of population control recipes aimed at limiting population growth in developing countries, Chilean actors found ways to employ global generic debates with a remarkable degree of creativity and autonomy within their own national context.
Vilana Pilinkaite-Sotirovic (Lithuania):
Marital Relations and Strategies of Everyday Life in Lithuania, 1864-1904
During the past three decades much discussion has focused on interpretations of modern romanticized husband-wife relationships within families. International historical research on the so-called "modern western" family has been seen to run the gamut of evolution from economic, interest-based family relationships to emotional, affective alliances. The rising ideals of the "modern" family in terms of emotional bonding, affective love and domesticity were inbuilt in research on the evolutionary change of society and myth of modernization. This simplistic model of modernization has been adapted by Lithuanian family historiography to investigate the change of the traditional family from economic unit to a modern affective relationship. In contrast, the present study suggests that in the nineteenth-century- Lithuania, a significant trend was the interplay between material needs, social interests and emotions in husband and wife relationships. Analysis of wills, disputes and negotiations in divorce litigation and civil courts will demonstrate that husband-wife relationships were shaped by social interests of property transmission and emotional expressions of support, reward and love. A husband assessed the economic contribution and social roles of his wife, rewarded and entrusted her as executor and passed on the family property. Social roles were expressed in terms of affectionate and emotional feelings. In the nineteenth-century Lithuania, a husband and wife formed a socially bounded alliance where objective and subjective factors balanced in order a family would survive and prosper, and both marital partners were reluctant to abuse or alienate each other for fear of destabilising family life. In practice, however, family life meant daily compromise between individual and other competing interests, in which it was not always clear who had primacy.
Rebecca Plant (University of California,
USA): "Please Don't Play the Martyr": The Self-Sacrificing
Mother in 1940s and 1950s American Culture
Throughout the l9th century and well into the 20th century, mothers were lauded for their self sacrif ce: selflessness constituted the very essence of the maternal role. Yet by the end of World War I, mainstream American culture had grown wary of the selfsacrificing mother. In popular culture and psychiatric literature, maternal "sacrifice" was exposed as a facade that concealed self-seeking desires while facilitating manipulative behavior. This rejection of maternal sacrifice occurred in tandem with the rise of psychoanalysis, which promoted new views about motherhood as the ultimate stage of psychosexual fulfillment. Thus, whereas Victorians bad depicted adult children as forever indebted to their mothers, postwar Americans tended to view mothers as indebted to their children. This paper will discuss why American culture could no longer countenance the notion that women sacrificed themselves for their children, and the contradictions that this created in an era that placed severe limitations on women's pursuit of autonomy.
Amelia Polonia (Universidade do Porto, Portugal):
Women's Contribution to Family, Economy and Society in Maritime Societies
in Portugal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
This paper presents some conclusions based on a case study, centred on a small
Portuguese maritime town involved in overseas navigation and trade circuits
during the sixteenth century. It further questions how the overseas expansion
reflects on women’s contributions to the family, the economy and to social
behaviour. As the expansionist phenomenon is traditionally interpreted from
a male perspective, it is important that we examine the manner in which the
female universe interacted with it. We intend to develop this approach at two
levels:
1. Examine the implications of male absences in the adjustment and broadening
of female roles in maritime societies, in the world of work, in economy and
in society in general;
2. Detect the alterations introduced into family structures and into the forms
of female sociability in spaces that are profoundly marked by women who remain
in contexts traditionally dominated by men who depart as agents in the processes
of overseas navigation, trade and emigration.
Our thesis maintains that the particular conditions created by the Portuguese
overseas expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was bound to have
a significant impact on the female universe, expanding their roles and social
participation. Underlying this phenomenon is the absence of men and its consequences
on the economic, societal, family and demographic structures, most noticeable
in maritime cities. The conclusions of the paper are drawn from an analysis
of documental corpora that include notarised deeds, parish registers, town council
minutes, taxes rolls, Inquisition proceedings, and wills, covering the period
from 1500 to 1640. Even though our functional model cannot be generalised to
other coastal spaces and to other societies, strongly marked by maritime economics
and experiences, dedicated to overseas expansion, we believe that general aspects
can be highlighted, which structurally frame the vast social dynamics found
within Portuguese maritime spaces during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Kim E Power (Australian Catholic University): Who'd
Want a Wife Like That? Debates About Women's Socio-Political
Roles in Victorian Catholic Newspapers, 1880-1908.
This paper will examine what happens when Victorian Catholic women attempt
to cross socio-religious and political gender boundaries in nineteenth century
Australia. It presents the findings of research into the attitudes to women's
participation in public arenas such as tertiary education and women's suffrage
articulated in Victorian Catholic newspapers at the just prior to, and at the
height of, the suffrage debates, 1876-1908. Victoria presents something of a
paradox in that it granted women the right to attend university in 1876, but
did not grant suffrage until 1908. Prior scholarship has argued for differences
between States in their attitudes to women deriving from their status as free
or convict settlements. Given that Victoria was a free settlement, this paper
will review the Victorian Catholic data to see if it provides an explanation
for this apparent contradiction and whether we can ascertain to what extent
other variables such as ethnicity and religion must be taken into consideration.
The analysis of discourse will pay particular attention to the construction
of gender roles and the nexus between religious discourse, theological argument
and politics in order to ascertain how Scripture and tradition are manipulated
on both sides of the debate.
Rima Praspaliauskiene (University of
California Berkeley, USA): Drawing Boundaries Between Public and
Private: Women’s Department in the Soviet Lithuania in 1945-1956.
Women’s Departments were established in Lithuania in 1945 under the rule of Communist Party. Women’s Department was in charge for the emancipation of Lithuanian women and for putting women’s question into the local political agenda. The Department mobilized women and initiated Women Councils in every district. Women’s Department and Councils first of all were responsible for the indoctrination of communist ideology and the building loyalty for the government, however these institutions mostly were solving the ordinary everyday life problems. Thousands of women were involved in the activities of the local Women Councils. So the Councils took an important part in the shaping of women’s lives in the postwar period. The research is based on the archival materials of Communist Party Women’s Departments and oral histories.
June Purvis (University of Portsmouth, UK): The
Private and Public Life of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928): Wife, Mother, Widow
and Leader of the Militant Suffragettes in Edwardian England
This paper explores the private and public life of Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928),
during the period when she was the leader of the militant suffragettes in Edwardian
England. A widow and mother of four children when she founded the WSPU in 1903,
Emmeline became the most notorious of the feminist leaders fighting for the
right of women to the parliamentary franchise. Always in the thick of the action,
she nevertheless had also private worries over her children. Her close friendship
with the musician Ethel Smyth perhaps answered some of her emotional needs as
a leader who had to keep a certain distance from her followers and as a single
parent
Natalia Pushkareva (Russian Academy of Sciences,
Moscow): Women, Family, Private Life and Sexuality in Russia: The
Effects of Orthodox and Etacratic Gender Orders
The study of eleven centuries of
the history of Russian women (862-present) demonstrates that a number of the
features of the contemporary gender order dates back to the traditional history
of the Russian state and law, culture and mentality. Private and family life
of Russian women during the first ten centuries of their history (862 -1917)
was defined by the orthodox concept of marriage. This is why the Russian gender
order from the tenth to the early twentieth centuries was essentially an orthodox
gender order. The history of the private life of Russian women (which includes
the history of female sexuality and their changing family status) was that of
control of female thought and the female body by the church (followed by other
social institutions). Therefore studying family, sexual and private life of
women in different periods of history shows how individual intentions fit into
the system of collective coercion, i.e. How women survived and expressed their
interests under constant rejection and deprivation. Secondly, an expert on the
private history of women would turn to the question on how liberation was taking
place - the emancipation of individual women from collective coercion, in other
words focus on the issue of possible conditional "freedom of actions"
from legal norms or rituals. The orthodox gender order - strictly patriarchal
in its basis - was constantly influencing the legal system, and causing the
removal of women from decision making in political and social life and the formation
of gender-asymmetrical patterns of family relations. There was essentially no
room for egalitarian relations left in these family structures, let alone the
recognition of women 's interests in private, intimate or sexual spheres as
"special".
Nevertheless, despite all the mechanisms of suppression Russian folk culture
constantly preserved and reproduced certain elements of gender equality (the
possibility of changing family roles, egalitarian decision-making in internal
family matters). The analysis of folk data -particularly those that represent
the history of private sphere and sexuality - demonstrates the limits of independence
among individual women or groups, as well as the mechanisms of stability and
change in different realms of private and intimate worlds.
Most of the twentieth century history - ranging from 1917 until 1991 and the
so-called post -Soviet period (1991 - present) was determined by a peculiar
gender order formed and infringed upon by the state, which should be referred
to as the etacratic gender order. The private and family life of Russian women
during these times was signified by the attempts of the state and Bolshevik
ideologists to construct a "new woman" within the framework of state
regulation of family life, introducing and changing official discourses, to
reinterpret the notions of "femininity" and "masculinity".
The history of' private life of Russian women in the twentieth and early twenty
first centuries (the Soviet and post-Soviet eras) can be divided into four periods:
defamilisation (1917 - early 1920s), total androgyny (late 1920s - mid 1950s),
the prevalence of "working mother" concept (late 1950s - 1991) and
the crisis of the etacratic order ( 1991 - present).