Women Servants Of The State 1870 1938

This reference book, containing the biographies of more than 1,100 notable British women from Boudicca to Barbara Castle, is an absorbing record of female achievement spanning some 2,000 years of British life. Most of the lives included are those of women whose work took them in some way before the public and who therefore played a direct and important role in broadening the horizons of women. Also included are women who influenced events in a more indirect way: the wives of kings and politicians, mistresses, ladies in waiting and society hostesses. Originally published as The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women, this newly re-worked edition includes key figures who have died in the last 20 years, such as The Queen Mother, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, Elizabeth Jennings and Christina Foyle.

The author examines the relationship between home and work, and the construction of gender equality, and discusses the key roles of women in the sphere of the home: wife, mother, worker, showing how the role/identity of 'wife' dominates and affects the other two roles.

In 1938: Modern Britain, Michael John Law demonstrates that our understanding of life in Britain just before the Second World War has been overshadowed by its dramatic political events. 1938 was the last year of normality, and Law shows through a series of case studies that in many ways life in that year was far more modern than might have been thought. By considering topics as diverse as the opening of a new type of pub, the launch of several new magazines, the emergence of push-button radios and large screen televisions sets, and the building of a huge office block, he reveals a Britain, both modern and intrigued by its own modernity, that was stopped in its tracks by war and the austerity that followed. For some, life in Britain was as consumerist, secular, Americanized and modern as it would become for many in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Presenting a fresh perspective on an important year in British social history, illuminated by six engaging case studies, this is a key study for students and scholars of 20th-century Britain.

Examines the experience of the pioneer women clerks, effects of changing office technology and administration, growth of commercial and secondary education for girls. Available from St. Martins Press. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

An examination of the ways in which women challenged the British educational, employment and welfare systems after the franchise. Helen Jones explores how women adapted their strategies to confront the system from within, and what constraints were imposed on them. She also examines the active role that British women played in Continental Europe, and an important comparative chapter looks at the experience of women in France, Germany, Italy, Australia and the USA.

The origins of the Post Office go back to the early years of the Tudor monarchy: Brian Tuke, a former King's Bailiff in Sandwich, was acknowledged as the first 'Master of the Posts' by Cardinal Wolsey in 1512, and went on to build up a network of 'postmasters' across England for Henry VIII. Over the following five hundred years the Royal Mail expanded to an unimaginable degree to become the largest employer in the country, and the face of the British state for most people in their everyday lives. But it also faced the demands of an increasingly commercial marketplace. With the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, the possibility of privatising the Royal Mail has prompted passionate arguments - and has added immeasurably to the difficulties of running it. In charting the whole of this extraordinary story, Duncan Campbell-Smith recounts a series of remarkable tales, including how postal engineers built the first programmable computer for the wartime code-breakers of Bletchley Park and how the Royal Mail managed to successfully continue delivering post to the front lines during two world wars, but also how they failed to avert the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He brings to life many of the dominant personalities in the Royal Mail's history - from Rowland Hill, who imposed a uniform penny post and set the great Victorian expansion on its way, to Tony Benn who championed the modernisation of the service in the 1960s and Tom Jackson who led the postal workers' biggest union through fifteen frequently stormy years up to 1982. This is the first complete history of the Royal Mail up to the present day, based on its comprehensive archives, and including the first detailed account of the past half-century of Britain's postal history, made possible by privileged access to confidential records. Today's debate over the future of the Royal Mail is shown to be just the ;atest chapter in a centuries-old conflict between its roles raising revenue and serving the public. Will its employees remain, like Brian Tuke's postmasters, servants of the Crown? This book could hardly appear at a more timely moment.

From the traditional stereotyped viewpoint, femininity and technology clash. This negative association between women and technology is one of the features of the sex-typing of jobs. Men are seen as technically competent and creative; women are seen as incompetent, suited only to work with machines that have been made and maintained by men. Men identify themselves with technology, and technology is identified with masculinity. The relationship between technology, technological change and women's work is, however, very complex.; Through studies examining technological change and the sexual division of labour, this book traces the origins of the segregation between women's work and men's work and sheds light on the complicated relationship between work and technology. Drawing on research from a number of European countries England, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, international contributors present detailed studies on women's work spanning two centuries. The chapters deal with a variety of work environments - office work, textiles and pottery, food production, civil service and cotton and wool industries.; This work rejects the idea that women were mainly employed as unskilled labour in the industrial revolutions, asserting that skill was required from the women, but that both the historical record about women's work and the social construction of the concept of "skill" have denied this.