Considering Conservative Women In The Gendering Of Modern British Politics

This volume examines how the British Conservative Party has appealed to women, the roles that women have played in the party, and the tense relationship between women’s activism on the Right and feminism. Covering the period since the early 20th century, the contributions each question assumptions about the reactionary response of the British Right, Margaret Thatcher’s party, to women’s issues and to their political aspirations. How have women been mobilized by the Conservative Party? What kind of party appeals has the British Conservative Party designed to attract women as party workers and as voters? Developing successful strategies to attract women voters since 1918, and appealing to certain notional women’s issues, and having produced the only two women Prime Minters of the UK, the Conservative Party has its own special relationship with women in the modern period. The shifting status of women and opportunities for women in politics in modern Britain has been garnering more scholarly attention recently, and the centenary of women’s partial suffrage in 2018 and Astor 100 in 2019 has done much to excite wider attention and public interest in these debates. However, the role of Conservative women has too often been seen as problematic, especially because of general assumption that feminism is only allied to leftist movements and political positions. This volume explores these themes through a range of case studies, covering the period from the early 20th to the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Women’s History Review.

This volume examines how the British Conservative Party has appealed to women, the roles that women have played in the party, and the tense relationship between women's activism on the Right and feminism. Covering the period since the early 20th century, the contributions each question assumptions about the reactionary response of the British Right, Margaret Thatcher's party, to women's issues and to their political aspirations. How have women been mobilized by the Conservative Party? What kind of party appeals has the British Conservative Party designed to attract women as party workers and as voters? Developing successful strategies to attract women voters since 1918, and appealing to certain notional women's issues, and having produced the only two women Prime Minters of the UK, the Conservative Party has its own special relationship with women in the modern period. The shifting status of women and opportunities for women in politics in modern Britain has been garnering more scholarly attention recently, and the centenary of women's partial suffrage in 2018 and Astor 100 in 2019 has done much to excite wider attention and public interest in these debates. However, the role of Conservative women has too often been seen as problematic, especially because of general assumption that feminism is only allied to leftist movements and political positions. This volume explores these themes through a range of case studies, covering the period from the early 20th to the 21st century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Women's History Review.

Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and the political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late 19th century. From the Primrose League (est.1883) to Women2Win (est.2005), the party has exploited women’s political commitment and their social power from the grass-roots to the heights of the establishment. Yet, although it is the party that extended the equal franchise, had the first woman MP to sit Parliament, and produced the first two women Prime Ministers, the UK Conservative Party has developed political roles for women that jar with feminist and progressive agendas. Conservative women have tended to be more concerned about the fulfilment of women’s duties than the realisation of women’s rights. This book tackles the ambivalences between women’s politicisation and women’s emancipation in the history of Britain’s most electorally successful and hegemonic political party.

This book is a re-interpretation of labour market policy models from a gender perspective, providing an analysis of within-gender inequality and how these policies affect inequality. It sheds light on the internal and external challenges confronting different gendered political economies, with distinct constellations of adjustment problems and reform agendas to incorporate women into the labour market. As such, the book shows how female political mobilization can influence labour market policy-making process. The target audience of this book is made by researchers and postgraduate students in the disciplines of sociology, gender studies, political science, political economy, and practitioners working in the fields of welfare policies and gender labour market services.

This book serves as an introduction to the extraordinary diversity of women’s activism. Paula Bartley's original research is supported by a range of writing to provide a powerful impression of the actions taken by groups of women from across the social and political spectrum, making the book invaluable to both students and interested readers. These women set out to make a difference to their locality, their country and sometimes the world. The story of women’s activism embodies stimulating accounts of progress and reversals, of commitment and uncertainty, of competing rights and challenging wrongs. The story of women’s activism is not tidy or well-ordered. It is messy and unorthodox. And full of surprises.

This book examines the statecraft of former UK Prime Minister, Theresa May as a means of deconstructing her leadership of the United Kingdom. Alongside the inescapable issue of Brexit that dominated her Premiership, it takes a wider view of her record in government by looking at how and why she stood for the leadership of the Conservative Party; scrutinizes her approach to economic, social, and foreign policy; interrogates her attitudes towards Northern Ireland and the DUP; and her longstanding records on race relations, LGBT+ issues, and feminism, as well as more traditional concerns such as faith, constitution, and Britishness. This volume is the first of its kind to adopt such a systematic approach in its evaluation of May’s leadership.

Inside the Black Box of ‘White Backlash’ researches the contents of the letters of support sent to British politician Enoch Powell in the wake of his so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of April 20, 1968. Never has a politician received so much written support in so short a time. This book takes a thematic approach to investigate the way British whites used Powell’s speech to vent their frustrations, anger, hostility against (non-white) immigrants and the evolution of British society in the late 1960s. Each chapter unpacks one facet of a 10,000-letter sample, out of the approximately 100,000 letters Powell received: Race, State, War, Empire, America, Class, Gender, Elites, Parties, ‘Against’ - with this last chapter analysing letters of protest against Powell. This extraordinary archival material provides an altogether unique window into British society in the late 1960s and reads like a (white) anthropology of nativist Britons in times of swift change. The book will be of interest to both students and academics of race, immigration and ethnicity, as well as by the general public. Olivier Esteves appears in this short video about the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0lA5Nb9cso

'I'm not a woman. I'm a Conservative.' Edwina Currie's startling claim is in sharp contrast with another Tory woman's view: she too was a Thatcher supporter but precisely because 'women are stronger than men and have a different approach'. The voices of 'iron ladies' like these ring out everywhere, trenchant, anxious, determined, dutiful. The issues that concern them - sex and morality, law and order, defence, education, the family - are widely thought to unite them. Yet is there a representative Tory women's view? Tracing back to the first women active in party politics, Beatrix Campbell describes how the female members of the Primrose League, established in 1883, canvassed and campaigned so vigorously for their men that they were often thought 'unwomanly'. And through the inter-war years to the present day they've continued to work tirelessly for a party at once dependent on their dedication and support yet resistant to their asserting a clear agenda for themselves within it. Theirs is a state of responsibility without power. It is this issue which lies at the heart of Beatrix Campbell's exploration of Tory Party women - living under a politics of paternalism which appears to give women and their concerns a central place but denies them the possibility of real change.