Essay on Napoleon: Feminism and Women

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Class Status and Culture – The Experience of Women Revision
‘Emancipation’ from what?
- ‘separate spheres’ ideology
- The Law
- Sexual double standards
- Scientific mythology
- Implications
Whence feminist advances?
- Campaigns re. Property, sexual oppression, education
- Employment implications
- Campaigns for women’s suffrage
- The aftermath of 1918
- Post 19-45 influences
Separate Spheres?
Male = private and rational
Female = private emotional
Why?
- Evangelical Christian input
- Separation of work and home
- The ‘prefect lady’ stereotype – marriage, domestic labour
Dependency was strongest for middle class and upwards
The Law
- No divorce before 1857
- No earnings till 1870
- No property till 1882
- No right to freedom till 1891 judgement – Rachel Beer, the first women to be editor of a newspaper
Sexual double standards
- Female chastity; male ‘wild oats’
- Who with? The ‘fallen woman’
- Madonnas or Magdalenes?
Ideology and Science
- Social Darwinism – women have been evolved in a way which deems them underneath the status of a man
- Female energy needed for child-rearing
- Supposed physiological inequality and weakness
Implications for men
- Men could swim between private and public – they were allowed to be in public working, be known in the town but also have a right to stay private whereas women would be solely private
- Later 19th Century model of respectable masculinity o Clubbable – a great expansion in the number of clubs – 400 at its height in London – because more and more men could vote they felt that they had to be allowed to attend these clubs – enjoy the status of being a gentleman o Remote father figures
Implications lower down
Percentage of female employment
1872 34.5
1881 33.1
1891 33.5
1901 33.9
1911 32.5 Whence Feminists advances? Campaigns against injustice
- Caroline Norton re. women’s earnings
- Divorce act of 1857
- Married women’s Property Act 1870, 1882 – income and later property
- Custody and Guardianship of Children Acts 1873, 1878, 1886
- Frances Power Cobbe (1860’s) – wife beating 1873 and 1895 acts
Struggle v. Injustices
- Repeal of Contagious Diseases Acts 1886
- 1864/69 acts
- ‘Lock’ hospitals
- Double standard; oppressive in w/c areas
- Josephine Butler and trade union campaign
Whence Advances Education
- Plight of Unmarried m/c women o Queens and Bedford colleges 1848-49 o Miss Beale and Miss Buss o Girls Public Day School Co. 1872 o Emily Davies and Girton College 1869 – 1873
Whence advances employment
- 1897 one third of London graduates are females
- But 1919-20 still only 27% of women in the UK are employed o (29% IN 1970)
- Employment firsts –WW1 Created many mechanical jobs for women when men were busy out fighting – ‘the war revolutionised the industrial position of women’ – Millicent Fawcett
- Consequence of feminist advances or development of economy?
Economy v Activism
- Society for the promoting of employment of women
- Yet by 1901 only 7% of professionals were female
- 326,000 o Nursing o Teaching o Secretaries, typists, clerks o 2/3 of lower professional occupations by 1911
Winning the suffrage
- Campaign for the vote o Chastity for men; votes for women o Suffragism = constitutional o Suffragettes = militant o WW1 = militant feminists as patriots
- 1918: votes all men but only over thirty women o eight million female voters
- 1928: Equal Franchise act
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