Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900-39

Download or read book Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900-39 written by Alison Oram and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women teachers were key players in twentieth century feminism. They fought for women's suffrage before the First World War and continued their vigorous campaigns for equal pay, equal promotion opportunities and abolition of the marriage bar into the less promising political environment of the 1920s and 1930s. This book is the first to offer a detailed assessment of why women teachers were so politically active, and makes an important contribution to the literature on women's politicisation. Drawing on interviews with women teachers (in state elementary and secondary schools) as well as the records of teachers' associations and central and local government, it explores the tensions in the relationship between their position at the workplace and their family lives and unravels the connections and dissonances between how they saw themselves as both women and professional teachers.