Women’s Activism in Twentieth-Century Britain with Dr Paula Bartley

Women’s Activism in Twentieth-Century Britain: making a difference across the political spectrum

This lecture is based on Dr. Paula Bartley's latest book Women’s Activism in 20th century Britain. During the event, she will use a range of images to illustrate how individuals and groups of women from across the political, social, and cultural spectrum sought to make a difference to their locality, their country, and sometimes to the world. Women, she will remind us, are not a homogenous group all fighting for the same rights. Women are united – and divided – by their class, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, nationality, political persuasion, and so on. Indeed, one woman’s rights may well be another woman’s wrongs.

Dr Paula Bartley will introduce the class, racial and political range of women’s activism. So many of the women activists were very ordinary, not rich, not famous, and not influential, yet they affected significant change. She will highlight the racial diversity of women activists from Olive Malvery onwards. In her talk she will look at the political diversity of women activists, arguing that not all fought for progressive causes. Finally, she will examine the diversity of feminist campaigners who did not always agree in their analysis of injustice. Here she will show how black women intellectuals challenged (predominantly white) class and gender hegemonic ideas to form a new conceptual framework, that of intersectionality.

Dr. Paula Bartley is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She has published widely for both an academic and a student readership focusing particularly on women’s history. Her books include Emmeline Pankhurst (2002) Ellen Wilkinson (2014), Queen Victoria (2016), Labour Women in Power (2019), and Women’s Activism in 20th Century Britain (2022). She was a former Chair of the Women’s History Network book prize.