Early gender relations

Question 1

1924 female electorate %

Answer 1

42%

Question 2

Tosh - masculinity at its core

Answer 2

Fundamentally relational, making changes in femininity significant

Question 3

Representation of the People Act

Answer 3

Enfranchised 8.4 million women over the age of 30

Question 4

1923 election - female MPs and limitations

Answer 4

8 MPs

However, generally had to focus on social welfare as associated with domesticity

Question 5

Dwindling female MPs

Answer 5

14 in 1929

9 in 1935

Question 6

Significance of votes for women

Answer 6

Only the beginning of a slow erosion of male dominance in the political sphere

Universal suffrage only granted in 1928

Younger women not given the vote as considered too radical

Question 7

Higgonnet - double helix

Answer 7

Improvements for women were always accompanied by improvements for men

Lack of overall progress

Question 8

1918 enfranchisement of men

Answer 8

5 million men also enfranchised

Less about progress for women, but a general widening of social groups involved in politics

Question 9

Bingham - ‘backlash’

Answer 9

Questioned by Bingham

However, even mild reactionary policies show a lack of change in the public sphere

Question 10

Anti-female legislation

Answer 10

Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act (1919)

Widespread marriage bars

In wording of official report on the differences in the curriculum between the sexes

Question 11

Lewis - domestic importance

Answer 11

‘inequalities in the domestic world structure inequalities in the public sphere’

Question 12

Birth rates and limit to importance

Answer 12

Dramatically falling during the period, suggesting a level of emancipation

However, still within the context of an oppressive institution of marriage

Question 13

Sexist features of marriage

Answer 13

1857 Matrimonial Causes Act - fault-based divorce system only applicable to male divorcees

Question 14

Carpenter’s mutualist movement

Answer 14

Lack of total ‘intimate equality’ achieved in the period

Question 15

Lane - WC women de facto control

Answer 15

Routinely made ‘quite major family decisions’

Even jointly consulting on matters of male employment

Move away from Victorian paterfamilias concept

Question 16

Szreter and Fisher - MC marriage change

Answer 16

Agreement that outright patriarchal control of marriage was far from idealistic

Question 17

Female employment

Answer 17

13% of women 35-44 in 1901

Question 18

Marie Stopes’ book on companionate marriage

Answer 18

‘Married Love’

Sold over 800,000 copies worldwide by 1938

Question 19

Beveridge on marriage

Answer 19

‘partnership’ with ‘caring’ and ‘sharing’ cornerstones of marriage

Question 20

Langhamer - love in marriage

Answer 20

Elevated during the period above any other factor in the legal commitment to marriage

However, under circumstances ‘encountered, given and transmitted from the past’

Question 21

Cook - female resistance to intercourse

Answer 21

Female abstinence was a widespread form of resistance to patriarchal control

Question 22

Pre-war masculinity

Answer 22

‘flight from domesticity’ and general lack of regard

Question 23

Supposed effect of WW1 on masculinity

Answer 23

Re-domestication of men due to the crushing of Victorian ideals of hyper-masculinity in the trenches

Question 24

Hammerton - Pooterism

Answer 24

More widespread acceptance of the ‘Pooterist’ view of masculinity, which emphasised domestic conservatism

Heavily parodied when articulated late C19

Soon became a norm of life C20

Question 25

Conservative targeting of policies

Answer 25

Centralised the domestic rather than the pub in post-1918 policies

Question 26

Houlbrook - malleability of masculinity

Answer 26

Study of cases of O’Dare and Fox showed homo/heterosexual binary was ‘fictive and insecure’

Had wider implications too

Question 27

Francis - varied male attitudes

Answer 27

Schizophrenic male responses to domesticity

Struggled to reconcile the ‘contradictory impulses of domestic responsibility and escapism’ even as late as 1940s

Question 28

Greenfield - Men Only mag

Answer 28

Shows general sense of male disgruntlement with the ‘feminisation’ of culture

Shows male disruptions of currents of change

Question 29

Bingham - summary of period

Answer 29

Not a single trend of advances, but a confusing array of inconsistent developments

Question 30

Newspaper fears of young women voters

Answer 30

Extensive articles in Mail and Mirror opposing ‘flapper voters’

21-30 year olds gained the vote in 1928

Question 31

Muggeridge - socio-economic disenfranchisement

Answer 31

2 million women over the age of 30 were unable to vote after 1918 due to property requirements

Question 32

Gleadle - men excluded from politics

Answer 32

Many were excluded due to 1867 Reform Act, and remained outsiders until 1918

However, parliament was entirely masculine

Question 33

Davies - young women consumers

Answer 33

Interwar they became ‘relatively privileged’ as consumers of leisure

More allowances for cinemas and dancehalls