After the Great Famine (1845-1852), Irish women migrated to cities near and far, encountering new challenges like managing childbirth without their traditional communities while living in overcrowded urban housing. Some poor Irish women turned to institutions like workhouses and lying-in hospitals as spaces for giving birth. This article examines how poor Irish women chose where to give birth and compares the strategies they deployed to gain admission to two urban institutions: the South Dublin Union workhouse and the New York Asylum for Lying-In Women. While Irish workhouses only allowed 'destitute,' unmarried women to enter the institution alone, the Lying-In Asylum in New York required patients to be 'respectable' and married. To contend with locally contingent and differential admission restrictions, I argue that Irish women developed 'scripts' for performing qualities like respectability or destitution based on the specific entry requirements of a given institution. As they emigrated, they adapted these scripts to each local and institutional context, showing transnational dimensions of collaboration between Irish women. Even while emigration and shifts towards institutional childbirth led to the loss of many birthing traditions, Irish women asserted their own agency and carried strategies abroad in order to create the best possible conditions for childbirth.
Modern Ireland lacks a comprehensive history of maternal mortality. With the mid-twentieth century advent of what Northern Ireland's leading gynaecologist labelled 'a social obstetric conscience', maternal mortality came to increased levels of prominence. This coincided with the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948 but reducing the rate of maternal mortality took decades in Northern Ireland (NI), with the decline being often slower than in other constituent parts of the United Kingdom (UK). This article collectively assesses successive government reports conducted into maternal mortality in Northern Ireland to gauge the medical profession's views of and approaches to maternal death. With a particular emphasis on factors that were deemed preventable, the impact of the National Health Service, the reduction in birthing options available to women, as well as habitual notions of female culpability encompassing expectant mothers, handywomen and midwives, are analysed for the first time in this period of Northern Ireland's history.
In 1925 the Medical Women's Federation (MWF) decided it was paramount to create a clinical picture of what menstruation 'should' be like for the average girl. The Federation joined forces with two other professional organisations, vastly expanding the scale and scope of their investigation. The research, which took the form of one large survey and one subsequent smaller survey, found a picture of a healthy and capable adolescent, for whom menstruation was rarely a significant problem. This was in stark contrast to the popular understanding of menstruation as physically and intellectually incapacitating. The surveys showed that menstrual 'disability' was often caused by a lack of education, and a lack of 'menstrual infrastructure'. They suggested that infrastructural and educational shifts were needed to enable girls to menstruate without shame and discomfort, only then could older ideas about menstruation as 'disabling' be disproven. The Federation used its growing cultural capital as a large group of medical women to perform this paradigm shifting research on a large scale, and went on to disseminate their findings to the medical profession and the wider public, lobbying for infrastructural changes.
This article examines how minority language status and gender shape the identities and experiences of women working in Irish language broadcasting in Ireland between the 1970s and 2020s. It considers how women negotiate the dual minoritisation of being minority language speakers and women working in broadcasting. Drawing on interviews with ten women, at different career stages, the article identifies three key themes. First, women benefitted from the expansion of Irish language broadcasting especially after the establishment of Irish language television in the 1990s, finding career paths outside of those commonly available to Irish speaking women. Second, women championed Irish language broadcasting, as it sustains Irish language communities. They saw the provision and funding of it as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion issue, more so than gender. Finally, some women were reluctant to suggest gender inequality in Irish language broadcasting but paradoxically relayed personal experiences of gender inequality especially as mothers in work, and structural issues related to gendered pay disparity. While the issues of pay disparity and women's care roles are prominent in scholarship on media work, there has, to date, been little examination of how gender intersects with minority group status in Ireland. This article addresses that gap.
This article analyses the networks that were developed by Irish-born women in colonial Australia as they approached childbirth in the 1860s. Although previous historical scholarship has concentrated on the distress and disadvantage that Irish women faced, this article suggests that instead, many of these women consciously established and accessed formal and informal support as they planned for their maternity care. This article uses two data sets from the Australian colony of Victoria to analyse Irish women and their networks of maternal care. One group of sources is narratives of birth attendants recorded through inquests into maternal deaths. While these testimonies of tragedy provide vivid detail of networks of care, they cover only a small number of births, so the records of the Melbourne Lying-in Hospital, a charity hospital serving the poor of inner-city Melbourne, are also analysed. These particularly complete hospital records, although they do not usually include lengthy narratives of births, do include information on a larger number of women than the inquests.
In 2019, ultra-runner Jasmin Paris made international headlines by winning the Montane Spine Race while regularly stopping to breastfeed, challenging long-standing notions about women's physical limitations during pregnancy, maternity, and breastfeeding. Historically, medical discourse has framed women's bodies as inherently weaker and fragile, particularly during their reproductive lives, and has mobilised anatomical features such as the pelvis and the breasts to justify restrictions on women's physical activity. While historians have extensively examined the medicalisation of women's bodies, less attention has been paid to the specific role of the breast as a key operator in the gendered organisation of sport. Drawing on a socio-historical analysis of 189 medical publications (including 53 doctoral theses), sports periodicals, and archival sources from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article argues that the breast functioned as a central site through which medical experts naturalised women's exclusion from intense physical exercise and competitive sport. Far from being a neutral physiological concern, the breast was constructed as both a reproductive and aesthetic object, underpinning medical prescriptions that regulated women's movements, limited muscular development, and reinforced a strict sexual bicategorisation of sporting bodies. By tracing how medical discourses linked physical activity, breastfeeding, and femininity within broader hygienist, pronatalist, and eugenic frameworks, this article demonstrates how sport became a privileged arena for the production and maintenance of gender difference. It further shows that these historical constructions continue to shape contemporary debates surrounding women's athletic performance, maternity, and breastfeeding, revealing the enduring legacy of medical authority in the governance of women's sporting bodies.
This article examines transnational mothering during the Great Famine (1845-1852) and the emigrations of the era. It analyses epistolary sources to ask how women in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland used their roles as mothers to claim agency and demonstrate authority. It complicates contemporary descriptions of the suffering mother and the sacrificing mother, asking how and why mothers attempted to continue parenting their absent children by displaying agency and constructing themselves as committed mothers in an age of crisis. Missives sent from Ireland to emigrant children reveal how some mothers employed tropes of suffering and martyrdom for particular purposes. Most not surprisingly sought to secure financial support. They also laid claim to authority and influence within their families and communities, constructing themselves as agents and actors rather than solely victims or sufferers.
BBC administrative and personnel documents often refer to the 'value' that an employee brought to the organisation, both positive and negative. While not inherently gender-based, these evaluations could have a gendered dimension. Specifically, the introduction of a Marriage Bar in 1932 established the notion of the 'exceptional' woman who was worthy of keeping her job with 'special value' part of the criteria for retention. This paper considers 'value' in the context of two 'exceptional' women-Isa Benzie and Joanna Spicer-from the mid-1930s to 1950, encompassing their years at the BBC and also with the Ministry of Information (MOI)'s Broadcasting Division during the Second World War. Benzie, who achieved the status of BBC Foreign Director in 1933, held a senior role at the MOI before returning to the BBC in 1943 in a lower capacity as a Talks Producer. Joanna Spicer, a former Selfridges' administrator, became frustrated with her more junior MOI post and moved to the BBC's Overseas Department in 1941, motivated by the prospect of better pay and career prospects. The wartime and post-war experiences of Benzie and Spicer encapsulate a host of gendered issues including professional status, pay grades, job titles and advancement.
This article explores women's experiences of miscarriage and pregnancy loss in late-twentieth-century Ireland. Drawing on oral history interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, the newsletters of the Miscarriage Association of Ireland, and women's memoirs, it demonstrates how understandings and experiences of miscarriage and pregnancy loss in late-twentieth-century Ireland were considerably shaped by Ireland's wider sociocultural context. As with many other aspects of reproductive health, miscarriage and pregnancy loss were shrouded in silence, while women faced a range of feelings around their losses. I use the lens of obstetric violence to frame women's experiences of pregnancy loss in medical settings. I argue that with the advent of the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign in 1981, and subsequent referendum on the right to life of the unborn child and introduction of the Eighth Amendment of the Irish constitution in 1983, understandings of miscarriage shifted considerably with increased value placed on foetocentric personhood. This meant that foetocentric grief became the normative response. With the emergence of the Miscarriage Association of Ireland in 1988, storytelling became an important tool in raising awareness of pregnancy loss and supporting women. Medical professionals and hospitals began to engage in more compassionate practices, yet inadequacies in care persisted.
This article explores how the Kurdish women's movement Kongra Star in North and East Syria mobilises women and implements liberation ideals during the transition from war to peace. Using the concept of 'discursive opportunity structures', this paper examines how Kongra Star frames gender liberation through ideological and cultural discourses that transcend ethnic and political divisions. Building on William A. Gamson & David S. Meyer's argument that movements succeed by shaping discursive contexts as well as political opportunities, the study investigates how Kongra Star challenges dominant norms and promotes alternative visions of society. The article draws on ethnographic fieldwork, including over fifty semi-structured interviews and participant observation in Northern Syria in 2022. This empirical material reveals how discursive strategies are enacted in organisational practices, recruitment, and activism. By focusing on women's own narratives, the study contributes to understanding the role of discourse in fostering structural change and gendered emancipation in post-conflict settings.
This article shows how women's creative labour fundamentally shaped Indian television in its formative years during the 1970s and early 1980s. It traces the emergence of feminine cultural capital within the Nehruvian institutional apparatus of the 1970s which was strategically harnessed by Indian state television, Doordarshan, to advance its mandate of popularising arts and culture through state-controlled media. Detailed case studies demonstrate the co-evolution of women programme producers and the nascent medium of television. Doordarshan provided unprecedented creative opportunities to highly skilled and educated women. Concurrently, despite having never seen a TV set and with limited formal training, several women producers pioneered distinct televisual aesthetics. The article moves beyond questions of women's access to technology to reveal how they actively reworked technological practices and cultural representation. A closer look at everyday gendered working conditions also reveal that creative self-actualisation became entangled with extractive labour conditions as the producers grappled with primitive technology, limited resources and a bureaucratic environment. These accounts challenge tendencies to mount homogenous narratives of institutional progress and gender opportunity. Combining close institutional analysis, oral history and feminist labour theory, the article maps women producers' pioneering contributions while complicating their relationship to labour, technology and governmentality.
The International Council of Women (ICW, founded 1888) is one of the oldest international women's organisations with a long interest in emerging media. The ICW's broadcasting committee repeatedly surveyed their members for information and compiled the data into reports that it then distributed among its members. Such surveys provide insights into the evolving visions of broadcasting within the international women's movement and specifically organisations such as the ICW. In this paper, we analyse ICW surveys and reports to consider how women's work in broadcasting was discussed and valued. We explore what women felt was valuable and valued in their work, as well as what value the ICW saw in women's work in broadcasting, and what tactics they sought to develop to improve women's positions within the broadcasters. We conceptualise these surveys as reflecting 'institutional activism' undertaken by women well-embedded within their institutions, and the media tactics developed from that position. However, while the surveys and reports offer us rich insights into the agendas of women's activism in broadcasting, they did not coalesce into a coherent or unified strategy. This has in turn contributed to archival silence and historiographical silence on women's institutional activism in broadcasting in this period.
Spiritualism thrived in Australia between the world wars through a network of Spiritualist churches, private readings and s & eacute;ances. Women were central to this activity. They conducted most private consultations, led church mediumship and held leadership roles in many Spiritualist congregations, including as ordained ministers. Mass mourning after the Great War, losses from the influenza pandemic and the economic struggles of the Depression increased interest in spirit communication, and women met that demand. This article explores how female mediums found in Spiritualism a path to spiritual authority, public visibility and income. It argues that Spiritualism provided opportunities for religious leadership and paid work, but these gains were tenuous. Police often targeted professional female mediums and prosecuted them under vagrancy laws, despite volunteering their labour for Spiritualist churches. Their authority was recognised within Spiritualist communities but often challenged in the courts and by the popular press. By exploring the experiences of 'high street' and church mediums and physical s & eacute;ance practitioners, the article uncovers the opportunities and limits of women's agency in interwar Australia. It shows Spiritualism as a significant yet contested space where women sought spiritual and economic independence during a period of pronounced social change.
This article examines Jeanne 'Johnny' Bradnock's career as BBC Television Make-up and Wardrobe Manager (1946-1964) to reveal how women's below-the-line television labour has been historically undervalued. Using archival materials, newspapers, and oral histories in a 'patchwork' methodology, the study reconstructs Bradnock's professional contributions and strategic self-fashioning. She adopted a masculine nickname, developed a respected leadership style and cultivated press coverage to elevate the status of feminised craft roles. BBC internal documents reveal systemic gender discrimination in pay, conditions, and recognition, which Bradnock challenged through advocacy. Her department pioneered crucial technical innovations in make-up and costume design responding to evolving camera technologies during television's black-and-white era-work essential to production yet consistently marginalised. The research demonstrates Bradnock's agency in shaping how her department's contributions were valued both internally and publicly. This study contributes to feminist television historiography by addressing significant gaps in scholarship on women's below-the-line roles. It shows that while structurally devalued, feminised departments like make-up and wardrobe offered women opportunities for leadership and influence in early television production that deserve greater scholarly attention and archival preservation.
Using previously unavailable material from the archives of the Motion Picture Costumers union (IATSE Local 705), this article reconstructs the emergence of television from the perspective of those working in Hollywood's wardrobe department. Focussing on an area of screen production typically overlooked within media histories, it provides a corrective to the narratives of 'great men' in television and argues that the work of these (largely female) practitioners contributed enormously to the aesthetics of early television and ultimately secured its success in both the US and on the international stage. The article reexamines a period in which Hollywood's supposed antipathy towards television was at its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, challenging the view that television was perceived as film's subordinate 'other'. It argues that this sentiment was not felt equally by all working in the 'great industry' of cinema. Rather, news of a potential 'television boom' was well received by Local 705's members, and the union moved quickly to capitalise on this potential new influx of costuming work. Television promised not only stable employment for members, but also required a broadening of creative and technical skill, which many hoped would translate into a newfound professional respect.
This article focuses on Woman Speak!: A Quarterly Newsletter About Caribbean Women that emerged in the context of the United Nations Decade for Women and the wider Women in Development (WiD) movement of the 1970s. I argue that Woman Speak! represented an important form of print activism within the Caribbean women's movement of the late twentieth century. In its early years the newsletter was focused on documenting the diversity of the Caribbean women's movement through highlighting projects and organisations, especially those linked to WiD initiatives. By 1983, Woman Speak! transformed to become a critical space for central themes within the Caribbean women's movement, including gender-based violence, labour and employment, and women's legal status. After the UN Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985, Woman Speak! shifted again, adopting regional and international perspectives to focus on feminist concerns, including activism, organisations, and history. A close engagement with Woman Speak! helps reveal the significance of print culture in shaping the development of the Caribbean women's movement and the complex relationship of feminism within it, as well as themes of internationalism and neo-colonialism.
Ca & iuml;da Halima (1859-1944) stands as the only woman in the history of colonial Algeria to have borne a title traditionally and exclusively reserved for men. She epitomizes the exception within the category of the 'indigenous woman.' As a shrewd businesswoman, she possessed an intelligence shaped not only by her native cultural environment but also by her mastery of European social codes. Halima contributed to philanthropic initiatives supporting Algerians under colonial rule, while simultaneously cultivating peaceful relations with the French social elite. What might be interpreted as compliance, in fact, reveals itself as a strategic posture. Halima succeeded in establishing herself-despite the double burden of being both a woman and an 'indig & egrave;ne'-as an influential figure in the eyes of Europeans. She defended both her personal interests and those of individuals with whom she maintained 'maternal' relationships, while skilfully navigating colonial structures to assert her legitimacy and authority. The aim here is to shed light on a woman named Halima-her name meaning 'clement' in Arabic-who, despite her modest and conservative background, rose to become a powerful figure, both respected and feared, within her native milieu as well as in colonial and European society of the time.
This study examines the influence of Catholic clergy, particularly Father John A. Ryan, on social reform during the New Deal era, focusing on his interpretation of Pope Leo XIII's teachings and the ways that he used Catholic theology to limit the influence of birth control advocates, such as Margaret Sanger, in New Deal policy-making circles. This article analyses primary sources, including speeches, letters, and Papal encyclicals, to illuminate Ryan's beliefs and his advocacy for economic reforms rooted in papal teachings. The research also highlights Ryan's support for the 'rhythm method' of birth control as a viable alternative to birth control devices such as condoms and diaphragms. In addition to his attempts to blunt the success of birth control advocates, such as Sanger, Ryan argued that birth control should not be prioritised over economic remedies he saw as more central to the welfare of the working class, such as minimum wage legislation. This paper argues that Ryan was fairly successful, integrating himself into New Deal committees and collaborating with Catholic Postmaster General Jim Farley to limit Sanger's influence on New Deal politics. This research demonstrates the pivotal role of religious figures, such as Father Ryan, in shaping public policy on social issues during the New Deal era, illustrating the intersection of religious beliefs and political reform in a transformative period in U.S. history.
Scholars of the Women's Liberation Movement have documented the gradual shift within WLM scholarship and broader feminist culture towards a more empathetic approach to infertile women, and a more open-minded attitude towards the potential offered by assisted reproductive technology in the 1980s. This article seeks to illustrate how one community of feminists-the contributors to and readers of the British WLM periodical Spare Rib-came to shift their attitude towards infertility and its treatment across the course of that decade. The article draws on existing scholarship on epistolary cultures within the women's movement, as well as work on the emotional regimes of second wave feminism, to argue that a genuine dialogue emerged within the columns of Spare Rib in the 1980s that helped the magazine's readers to develop a broader consciousness and empathy around infertility. It argues that the productive conversation over infertility and its treatment that took place in Spare Rib offers an illustrative model of how attitudes and perspectives can evolve within social movements like the WLM.
This article sheds light on the unauthorised activities of visiting medical staff in Soviet Lithuania. Mainly, female Soviet medical staff were supposed to take care of women's and children's health in the suburban and rural parts of Soviet Lithuania. They had to carry out doctors' prescriptions and provide social monitoring. However, an analysis of extensive archival, published, and oral history sources reveals that, while fulfilling the roles assigned to them by the authorities, they also assumed a distinct function as providers of alternative health and social services, as well as practical knowledge-resources that were in high demand, but unavailable through official channels in everyday Soviet life. Visiting medical staff often acted as social intermediaries between different agents of society, creating a network of women's self-help services and supplies that existed alongside the formal system. This research shows that activities of feldshers and visiting sisters often assumed an illegal character and were incompatible with their official duties. In addressing the needs of society, they became important agents in the public's survival strategies.
