Description
Women in Fifties Britain
A New Look
Coordinators: Tinkler Penny, Spencer Stephanie, Langhamer Claire
Language: EnglishKeywords
Married Women; Cosmopolitan Sociability; housewives; Emotional Labour; post-war Britain; Rural Femininity; marriage; Young Farmers; Women's History Review; Farmer's Wife; Crosby Hall; British cinema; Social Problem Films; education of women and girls; Married Women's Employment; gender and the workplace; Young Men; 1950s; Beat Girl; British women's lives; Young Female Sexualities; Stephanie Spencer; Sexual Innocence; Claire Langhamer; Pop Stars; Janet Fink; Working Wives; Sian Edwards; Mixed Race Couples; Helen McCarthy; Perfect Secretary; Gillian Murray; Mixed Race Relationships; Clive Webb; Interracial Relationships; Angela Davis; Mass Observation; Caitríona Beaumont; British Federation; Office Wife; Round Table; Round Table Conferences; Professional Housewife
Publication date: 02-2019
· 17.4x24.6 cm · Paperback
Publication date: 08-2017
· 17.4x24.6 cm · Hardback
Description
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Contented housewives, glamorous women, jive-mad teenagers ? all are common figures in popular perceptions of 1950s Britain. But what more did it mean to be a girl or woman in the fifties? And what are the implications of this history for understanding post-war Britain?
Women in Fifties Britain explores the lived experience of girls and women, and the way in which their story has been told. Crossing boundaries ? disciplinary, conceptual and thematic ? and drawing creatively on new and established sources, it extends and enriches the terrain of women?s history. Diverse groups of women come into view, including farmer?s wives, university-educated women, activist housewives, working mothers, Jewish refugees, girls ?at risk? and private secretaries. Revealing that their private, public and professional lives were central to reshaping society, the collection engages with the legacy of World War II, and with questions about the distinctiveness of the 1950s. Embracing emotion, labour, gender, class, race, sociability, sexuality and much more, the authors offer penetrating exploration of established and new categories of historical analysis. Placing the politics of gender at the heart of Britain?s reconstruction, this engaging and important collection re-visions 1950s Britain and the women that made it.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Women?s History Review.
Introduction: Revisioning the History of Girls and Women in Britain in the Long 1950s1. Teetering on the Edge: portraits of innocence, risk and young female sexualities in 1950s’ and 1960s’ British cinema2. ‘Nothing gets her goat!’ The Farmer’s Wife and the Duality of Rural Femininity in the Young Farmers’ Club Movement in 1950s Britain3. Women, Marriage and Paid Work in Post-war Britain4. Taking Work Home: the private secretary and domestic identities in the long 1950s5. Feelings, Women and Work in the Long 1950s6. Cosmopolitan Sociability in the British and International Federations of University Women, 1945–19607. Special Relationships: mixed-race couples in post-war Britain and the United States8. Belonging and ‘Unbelonging’: Jewish refugee and survivor women in 1950s Britain9. What Do Women Want? Housewives’ Associations, Activism and Changing Representations of Women in the 1950s
Penny Tinkler is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. Her publications include Constructing Girlhood (1995), Smoke Signals: Women, Smoking and Visual Culture (2006) and Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research (2013). She currently holds an ESRC award: ‘Transitions and Mobilities: Girls growing up in Britain 1954-76 and the implications for later-life experience and identity’.
Stephanie Spencer is Professor of the History of Women’s Education at the University of Winchester, UK. Her publications include Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (2005), and Alumni Voices: The Changing Experience of Higher Education (2015). She is currently researching British and American school stories for girls.
Claire Langhamer is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Sussex, UK. Her publications include Women’s Leisure in England, 1920–1960 (2000) and The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (2013). She is currently researching feelings at work in post-war Britain.