For Women, For Wales and For Liberalism

Ursula Masson

Description

This book explores the neglected history of women who were active in Liberal politics, campaigning for women's rights, the vote, and a full role for women in Welsh public life, at the end of the nineteenth century, and before the First World War. The over-arching argument of the book is that Welsh women's Liberal politics was distinctive, in its attempt to integrate an understanding of Liberalism which they shared with their English counterparts, and which included the aim of full equality for women, with a distinctively Welsh political agenda, and constructions of Welsh national identity. These constructions sometimes included a positive view of women in the nation, but in times of political crisis redefined gender on a more reactionary model.

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Wales

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708322543
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 22 Mo

Extrait

‘FOR WOMEN, FOR WALES AND FOR LIBERALISM’

Gender Studies in Wales Astudiaethau Rhywedd yng Nghymru

Series Editors Jane Aaron, University of Glamorgan Brec’hed Piette, University of Bangor Sian Rhiannon Williams, University of Wales Institute Cardiff

Series Advisory Board Deirdre Beddoe, Emeritus Professor Mihangel Morgan, Aberystwyth University Teresa Rees, Cardiff University

The aim of this series is to fill a current gap in knowledge. As a number of historians, sociologists and literary critics have for some time been pointing out, there is a dearth of published research on the characteristics and effects of gender difference in Wales, both as it affected lives in the past and as it continues to shape present-day experience. Socially constructed concepts of masculine and feminine difference influence every aspect of individuals’ lives; experiences in employment, in education, in culture and politics, as well as in personal relationships, are all shaped by them. Ethnic identities are also gendered; a country’s history affects its concepts of gender differ- ence so that what is seen as appropriately ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ varies within different cultures. What is needed in the Welsh context is more detailed research on the ways in which gender difference has operated and continues to operate within Welsh societies. Accord- ingly, this interdisciplinary and bilingual series of volumes on Gender Studies in Wales, authored by academics who are leaders in their particular fields of study, is designed to explore the diverse aspects of male and female identities in Wales, past and present. The series is bilingual, in the sense that some of its intended volumes will be in Welsh and some in English.

‘FOR WOMEN, FOR WALES AND FOR LIBERALISM’

WOMEN IN LIBERAL POLITICS IN WALES, 1880 –1914

Ursula Masson

CARDIFF UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2010

© Helen Molyneux, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to repro- duce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7083-2253-6 e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2254-3

The right of Helen Molyneux to be identified as copyright holder of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Printed in Wales by Dinefwr Press, Llandybïe

Ursula Masson (1945–2008), Lecturer and subsequently Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan from 1994 to 2008, was the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters on Welsh women’s history. Her editorial work included co-editingLlafur, the Welsh people’s history journal,Women’s Rights and ‘Womanly Duties’: the Aberdare Women’s Liberal Association, 1891–1910(2005) and for Honno Press, Elizabeth Andrews’sA Woman’s Work is Never Done(2006) andThe Very Salt of Life: Welsh Women’s Political Writings from Chartism to Suffrage(2007). She was involved in setting up and chairing Archif Menywod Cymru/Women’s Archive of Wales and initiated its highly successful series of roadshows. In recent years she also chaired the west of England and south Wales Women’s History Network. In all these activities she proved a lasting inspiration to those who worked with her or were taught by her. This current volume, based on her successful Ph.D. thesis, was at the point of going to press when she died; the editors of the Gender Studies in Wales series would like to thank Professor June Hannam of the University of the West of England for her help in preparing the final draft.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank June Hannam and Deirdre Beddoe for their expert help and guidance and, above all, patience and friendship during the course of my studies. Many thanks too to all those archivists and librarians of the collections listed in my bibliography for their assis- tance in locating and accessing the materials which form the basis for this work. To colleagues at the University of Glamorgan, to friends and students too numerous to name, thanks for invaluable discus- sions about sources and interpretations. And to my family, especially, all my thanks for support through the rough and the smooth, without which I could not have completed this book. Earlier drafts of chapters in this book have been published else- where and I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reproduce versions of them here. For a more extensive account of the history of the Aberdare Women’s Liberal Association given in chapter 5, see the introduction to my edited volume‘Women’s Rights and Womanly Duties’: The Aberdare Women’s Liberal Association, 1891–1910 (Cardiff, 2005). Some of the material in chapter 6 was published as Ursula Masson, ‘Womenversus“the People”: language, nation and citizenship, 1906–11’, in T. Robin Chapman (ed.),The Idiom of Dissent: Protest and Propaganda in Wales(Llandysul, 2006).

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

Introduction

Contents

PART I: THE THREE DIMENSIONS LIBERAL POLITICS IN WALES,

vii xi

OF WOMEN’S 1880–1914

1 ‘A groove to work in’: Women’s Liberal Organization in Wales, 1880–1914

2 ‘Women, Awake!’ The Welsh Union of Women’s Liberal Associations and the Impact of Women’s Suffrage

3 ‘The spoken centre’? The Welsh Union of Women’s Liberal Associations and the National Movement in Wales

PART II: POLITICS, PLACE AND GENDER: TWO CASE STUDIES

4 ‘Life in earnest’: Aberdare Women’s Liberal Association, 1891–1914

5 Out of ‘villadom’: Cardiff Women’s Liberal Association, 1890–1900

1

25

48

68

93

125