Pat Thane

The history of the gender division of labour in Britain: Reflections on "'herstory' in accounting: The first eighty years"

Abstract This article surveys the empirical research on the gender division of labour in Britain since pre-industrial times, seeking in particular to relate it to the history of the professions, which have been relatively little studied in this regard. It argues that industrialization brought about a less dramatic change in gender roles than is often believed. Neither simple economic nor simple biological explanations, or the influence of “domestic ideology”, can adequately explain continuing gender divisions. It relates the empirical data to the current state of feminist theory arguing that the “reserve army of labour” theory is not supported by the evidence, nor indeed is any existing body of theory. Rather a combination of theoretical perspectives, including those which incorporate male prejudice, must be used if we are to understand the long persistence of gender inequality in the workplace.

The Working Class and State ‘Welfare’ in Britain, 1880–1914

Some years ago Henry Pelling offered one of his stimulating and provocative challenges to a conventional wisdom of labour history. He pointed out that it is often assumed that the significant extensions of the welfare activities of the state by the post-1906 Liberal governments were in some way associated with the growth of the organized labour movement; that they were, if not simply responses to pressure from Labour (which has rarely been seriously argued), at least supported and welcomed by a significant proportion of the working class, and therefore could be expected by Liberal politicians to increase their credit with working-class voters, perhaps sufficiently to persuade them to resist the lure of Labour.

Old age from Antiquity to post-modernity

Based on themes such as status and welfare, Old Age from Antiquity to Post-Modernity examines the role of the elderly in history. This empirical study represents a substantial contribution to both the historical understanding of old age in past societies as well as the discussion of the contribution of post-modernism to historical scholarship.

Essays in social history

This new collection gathers together the best work in social history published in essay form in the past decade. A substantial introduction surveys the rapid growth in this field of study.

Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth‐Century England

This article explores the experiences of unmarried mothers who kept and tried to raise their children between World War One and the end of the twentieth century. It argues that there has not been a simple progression from their experiencing social stigma and ostracism to more enlightened attitudes since the 1970s. Rather there is a great deal that has hitherto been unknown about what the evidence suggests were very diverse experiences and attitudes throughout the period. A major change since the 1970s has been from pervasive secrecy about unmarried motherhood, cohabitation, adultery and similar ‘irregular’ practices, especially among the middle classes, to greater openness. The article uses a variety of sources, including the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (founded in 1918, now One Parent Families), oral histories, contemporary interviews and official and unofficial investigations.

Secondary Analysis of Dennis Marsden Mothers Alone

A secondary analysis has been made of 116 interviews with unmarried mothers carried out by Dennis Marsden in the mid-1960s. These are now held at ESDS Qualidata, University of Essex. They are being used in a wider study of unmarried motherhood in Britain since 1918. There are significant differences in research practices then and now: the interviewer did not obtain the interviewees consent to use the interviews in his research; the interviews were not recorded and transcribed verbatim, but reconstructed from notes and memory after the interview; the reconstructed interviews contain personal comments by the interviewer about the interviewees which would not now be acceptable; the interviewer was much less aware of the importance of class and gender dynamics in an interview situation than would now be the case. Hence the interviews are revealing about the history of social research as well as about the history of unmarried motherhood. These methodological changes mean that, like all sources. The interviews have to read be critically and with caution. Nonetheless they are revealing about the experience of unmarried motherhood in the mid-twentieth century.

Girton graduates: Earning and learning, 1920s-1980s

Abstract This article is based on a sample survey of the life histories of female graduates of Girton College, Cambridge between the 1920s and 1980s. It uses part of the survey data to ask why a group of talented and highly skilled women had less conventionally successful careers than men of equivalent ability and training. Few of them came from highly privileged backgrounds, but rather from among the many strata of the British middle classes. Most them expected to earn their livings for some part of their adult lives; for their whole lives between graduation and retirement if they were among the 35% of Girton graduates of the 1920s and 1930s who did not marry. After World War Two the majority married. At the same time it became possible, as it had not been before, for middle-class married women to work for pay outside the home. But their career opportunities continued, at least to the 1970s, to be limited, above all to school-teaching, as had been the case before the War, a limitation which many women resented. When new career opportunities opened, as they did for some during the War and to a limited extent after the War, they were taken up enthusiastically. Many used their skills, rather, in voluntary activities, such as the magistracy. Those who competed in male-dominated paid occupations, such as medicine, business or the law often experienced male hostility or discrimination. Few at any time claimed to want a conventional male pattern of life, dominated by career, but many, throughout the period, regretted that it was so difficult to combine marriage and child-rearing with a career which made use of their talents and skills flexibly over the life cycle. Very few indeed regretted their experience of motherhood.

Introduction: Exploring Post-war Britain

Writing the history of recent times, previously outside ‘history’, is a different adventure from revisiting pasts long tussled over by historians. There is little historical research and interpretation to learn from, build upon, reject. We have to construct our own research questions, though obviously these are not untouched by work and ideas drawn from earlier periods. We have to search out and learn to employ sources that do not exist for historians of the nineteenth century and before, such as film, radio and television, face to face interviews with those who lived our research topics, and to master more conventional documentary and visual sources, with the added challenge that all this material survives in sometimes overwhelming quantities. There are other challenges. Assumptions about the recent past are embedded in popular discourse, of people who lived through it and feel stronger ownership than of the more distant past. These are often romantic assumptions about an unspecified ‘past’, when everyone lived in happy families, headed by life-long partners, respecting their elders as they no longer do, in contented communities, where no one locked their front doors because there was much less crime. These notions can be hard for the historian to shift, no matter how strong the evidence. Moreover it was during the recent past that the social sciences expanded, becoming ‘scientific’ after the SecondWorldWar as never before. Their findings provide historians with invaluable source material, but sometimes they promote further illusions about ‘the past’ and change over time that conflict with our findings. Much, indeed most, of the cultural and social history of the twentieth century remains unexplored, slower to emerge than political and economic histories. The history of the post-Second World War period has, not surprisingly given the shorter time lapse, come later still and remains in its infancy. These articles convey a clear sense of where it has got to, while themselves moving it forward. An important trend they exemplify is resistance to the notion of the war as a great break in social and cultural life. It has become increasingly clear how little we can understand the political and economic as well as the social and cultural themes of the later twentieth century – including the success of the Labour Party in 1945, the end of Empire, debates about the fate of the British economy – if we overlook the continuities as well as discontinuities between the preand post-war years. TH A N E In tro du ct io n: Ex pl or in g P os tw ar B rit ai n

Barbara Wootton (1897–1988): pioneering social scientist, feminist and policymaker

This article briefly surveys the life and work of Barbara Wootton, who made an outstanding contribution to the social sciences and to public life, and to the connection between the two, between the 1920s and 1980s, but is too little remembered now. She campaigned for the parliamentary vote for women, for equality in public life when women had the vote, for equal pay, abortion, abolition of capital punishment, homosexual law reform, reform of the criminal justice system to encourage rehabilitation in place of punishment, for social equality more broadly and for policy changes to be underpinned by sound research. She deserves to be remembered.

The Changing Legal Regulation of Cohabitation. From Fornicators to Family, 1600–2010

equity, security), priority groups (women, adolescents, the elderly, and migrants), increased challenges posed by more rapidly urbanizing parts of the world, and new bioethical and gender issues. Infertility treatments are barely mentioned, although these now account for a growing fraction of births in middle-income as well as all high-income countries. On the other hand, a topical focus is provided on the potential implications of the sex-selection of unborn children in some Asian societies marked by strong son preference. Here the author notes recent reversals in the sex-ratio imbalances at high parities in South Korea and possibly elsewhere. Overall, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on population policy. Despite some shortcomings, the author has written an informative survey of a complex, multidimensional topic. The discussion of many types and aspects of policy is not as comprehensive as one might like, but the parts of the volume cohere well. It is especially useful for those who want a concise overview of diverse population policies in many parts of the world including their origin, evolution, and, to a lesser extent, their impact. It may thereby serve to promote wider knowledge of policies directed at improving multiple aspects of the human condition. The author has presented an interesting, helpful, and unified book. It can be read with profit by the layperson, the student, the specialist, and the policymaker. All will learn something.