With just over a month to go until International Women's Day 2023, Micaela Panes reflects on last September's Breaking the Glass Chamber conference and highlights the important of 'the local' in women's political history.
The Breaking the Glass Chamber: Women, Politics, and Parliament, 1945-1997 conference, held at the Mile End Institute in September 2022, highlighted a wide variety of research that covered many aspects of women's roles in post-war politics. From grassroots and neighbourhood activism to the Houses of Parliament, and from Ellen Wilkinson to Margaret Thatcher, the conference demonstrated women's participation in British politics.
Over the three days, we heard from historians, social and political scientists, current and former politicians, and political activists, all of which added to the ever-growing conversation of women's relationship with politics. The conference promoted cutting-edge research on the experiences and roles of women and displayed how women carved a space in British politics throughout the post-war period.
A theme which shone through the presented papers was the significance of the local in women's party and non-party political activism. Although many of the papers focused explicitly on different areas throughout Britain, commonalities in experiences and causes could be located across the wide breadth of research. Anna Muggeridge explored welfare campaigns and the role of women in local government in the West Midlands between 1945 and 1960. She highlighted individual women's roles in campaigns to increase day-schools and nurseries and establish cervical cancer clinics. In these ways, women were able to work across parties to improve the lives of women in their local constituencies.
My own paper touched on similar themes, examining how working-class women reimagined spaces (such as home and local communities) in South Wales to navigate politics and establish communities which better suited their now dual roles of housewife and breadwinner. Of course, not all activism was associated with the Labour movement. Olivia Wyatt looked at Black women's grassroots campaigns in Leeds throughout the 1970s, exploring how activists organised locally to challenge institutional racism, and improve and protect their communities.
A focus on the local allows us to better understand the motivations for political activism. The roundtable with Baronesses Dawn Primarolo and Estelle Morris, and Dame Margaret Hodge highlighted the importance of local activism in their political careers. For Primarolo and Hodge, it was the campaigns that they were involved with in their local communities which helped pave their path to Westminster. Many of these experiences were also highlighted in a special session covering the oral history project run by Emma Peplow and Priscila Pivatto from the History of Parliament Trust.
Although women have used the neighbourhood as a means of entering and establishing themselves in the political sphere, barriers to women's political careers are still evident at grassroots level. In commenting on the experiences of Muslim women in the Labour Party, Farah Hussain demonstrated the discriminatory barriers and intimidation many Muslim women faced in selection for local council elections. She stressed the importance of refocusing on the local in understanding initial challenges to women's political careers, thus highlighting areas for improvement in women's political representation. Campaign groups, such as 50:50 Parliament and Elect Her, discussed the work being done in communities and with political parties in supporting women to break down these barriers and stand for political office; with the overall aim of equal representation in Parliament.
The conference clearly demonstrated the significance of exploring the local in creating a wider and more rounded understanding of the national picture, adding yet another layer to what we know about the experience of women and other marginalised groups in British politics. These papers, in addition to many others over the three days, highlighted the need for a reassessment of women's political history considering the significance of the local. In re-examining local spaces, historians of political women and women's organisations can gain much-needed context for the wider national picture.
What is next women's political history? To continue strengthening this scholarship, historians of women and politics need to continue exploring the experiences of women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, LGBTQ+ women, non-party activists, and voluntary organisations, in addition to the networks and collaboration of women who worked across and beyond British political organisations.
Despite clear progress in both women's political experiences and in the scholarship, there is still a need and an urgency for greater exploration of women's political history.
Micaela Panes is a PhD student at Cardiff University. At the Mile End Institute's Breaking the Glass Chamber conference, Micaela presented on 'Working Class Women's Political Activism in South Wales' from 1945 to 1970.