Themes: Women
‘Not so much a question of greatness’
Review of Sheila Gooddie, Mary Gladstone: A Gentle Rebel (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Women and the Liberal Democrats
Review of Dr Elizabeth Evans, Gender and the Liberal Democrats – Representing Women? (Manchester University Press, 2011)
Mothers of Liberty
How modern Liberalism was made by women. Report of a Liberal Democrat History Group meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference, 22 September 2012, on the role of women in Liberalism and the Liberal Party. Speakers: Helen McCabe, Jane Bonham-Carter, Jo Swinson; Chair Lynn Featherstone
Mothers of liberty: how modern liberalism was made by women
Thanks to their exclusion from the right to vote and to stand for Parliament before 1918, the role of women in Liberal history is often overlooked. Yet many women played crucial roles, from the earliest days of Liberal history, as organisers, campaigners and theorists. This meeting analysed and celebrated the importance of women to the…
‘The only being who elects without voting, governs without law’
Review of K. D. Reynolds, Aristrocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford University Press, 1998).
Report: The struggle for women’s rights
Report of LDHG meeting of March 1998, with Shirley Williams and Johanna Alberti.
John Stuart Mill on votes for women
'We ought not to deny to them, what we are conceding to everybody else' – House of Commons, 20 May 1867
Women’s Liberal Federation
The Women's Liberal Federation was formed between 1886 and 1887 under the presidency of Gladstone's daughter, Catherine and by the turn of the century, the organisation had around 60,000 members and almost 500 local branches.
Liberals and women
When the Victorian women's movement emerged in the 1850s and 1860s it attracted women from Liberal families such as Barbara Leigh Smith who had been associated with Liberal crusades for temperance, anti-slavery and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Feminist achievements later in the century owed much to Liberals, notably Josephine Butler's campaign to repeal…
The struggle for women’s rights
What did the Party and its predecessors achieve for women’s rights, from the suffragettes onwards?