By Anna Muggeridge
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, women struggled to achieve political representation at the highest levels and at times, what progress and gains had been made could be lost. The number of women sitting in the House of Commons at any one time, for example, did not slowly but steadily increase. Fewer women were elected in the general election of 1951 than had been elected in 1950; fewer in 1966 than in 1964, and fewer in 1979 than (October) 1974. 1979 famously saw the first woman Prime Minister, but Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with feminism and the wider women’s movement is but one contentious aspect of her premiership. Notably, Thatcher only appointed one woman to a Cabinet position (Baroness Young, who served for just two years) and when Thatcher herself resigned and was replaced by John Major, the country had no women in Cabinet until 1992, when Gillian Shephard and Virginia Bottomley were appointed Education and Health Secretaries respectively. The first Black woman MP, Diane Abbott, was not elected until 1987, almost seven decades after the first white woman, Nancy Astor, took her seat in 1919. And in 1997, Labour’s landslide victory saw more than 100 women elected but this achievement was diminished and trivialised by labelling them ‘Blair’s Babes’. The story of women parliamentarians, and indeed women’s wider engagement with politics, through these years is therefore more nuanced and complex than an initial glance might suggest, and there is still much to be discovered about their experiences.
In September, the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London, will host a conference which seeks to bring together historians, political scientists, and sociologists to generate new conversations, relationships, and understandings of what politics meant to and for women in the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, the conference will play host to a number of current and former female members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who will reflect on their own experiences, including Baroness Angela Browning, Dame Margaret Hodge, Baroness Estelle Morris, Baroness Emma Nicholson, Baroness Dawn Primarolo, Baroness Gillian Shephard, and Siân James. We will also hear from campaign groups including 50:50 Parliament and the Fawcett Society, who will lead discussions about the future of women in politics. Keynote lectures by historians, sociologists and political scientists – including Professor Laura Beers, Professor Julie Gottleib, Professor Khursheed Wadia, Professor Clarisse Berthèzene, and Professor Sarah Childs, will enable scholars to reflect on the different insights and perspectives from cutting edge research on women in political campaigns, parties and institutions.
It is only by drawing together those working in a range of disciplines, as well as those with direct experience of working in and with parliament, that a true picture of women’s experiences in politics in this period will start to emerge. More significantly, the conference offers the opportunity to develop new directions in research into women’s politics in the later twentieth century, shaping the questions and lines of enquiry of current and future researchers into this relatively understudied area of British political history.
Papers at the conference will address a variety of local, national and international themes. With talks by, for instance, Micaela Panes on women’s activism in South Wales before the 1970s; Tom Chidwick on women’s role in the campaign for a Scottish Assembly, and Charitini Ntini on women’s in the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, we ask how far national identities impacted on gendered politics in this period. Other papers explore women’s experiences on the international stage, something which has often been overlooked, such as Richard Johnson’s examination of women and Euroscepticism or Charlotte Lydia Riley’s analysis of women and British overseas development policy.
A number of talks will explore the experiences of women from minoritized backgrounds in this period. Farah Hussain’s timely keynote invites us to consider the role Muslim women play and have played within the Labour party. Beckie Rutherford asks how disabled women conceived of themselves as ‘political’, while Ashlee Christofferson will address the whiteness of ‘sex discrimination’ legislation. While there may, broadly speaking, have been progress in terms of the number of women sitting in Parliament between 1945 and 1997, there is still much opportunity to reflect on how other aspects of individuals’ identities—their race, class, sexuality or religion, for example—intersected with their gender within and outside the House of Commons.
Indeed, many of the papers at the conference will address campaigns which did not (necessarily) take place within parliament, such as Rose Debenham’s talk on the women of Greenham Common; Frances Galt’s research into women’s industrial disputes around the time of the 1970 Equal Pay Act, or Grace Heaton’s analysis of women’s roles in the campaign for the ordination of women. At the same time, other papers will consider how structures, institutions and cultures worked to exclude women: and how women sought to break down these barriers: with Emma Lundin providing a comparative perspective on gender quotas and gatekeeping strategies and Gillian Murphy reflecting on the post-war lobbying group Women for Westminster.
The conference therefore offers a unique opportunity for academics, politicians, policymakers and campaigners to come together to discuss the female political experience in the second half of the twentieth century, and, in so doing, open up new directions for current and future research. We very much hope that you will join us at the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London from Thursday 15 to Saturday 17 September. Details of how to watch the main sessions if you are not able to attend in person will be available nearer the time. You can view the full programme and sign up for tickets at the MEI website.
Dr Anna Muggeridge is Lecturer in History at the University of Worcester and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute.