Laura Schwartz, de University of Warwick, présentera sa communication “Feminism and the Servant Problem: Class and Domestic Labour in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement” le jeudi 11 avril 2019 de 17h30 à 19h. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421

“In the early twentieth century, more and more women fought for the right to professional employment and political influence outside the home. Yet if liberation from household ‘drudgery’ meant employing another woman to do it, where did this leave domestic servants? Both inspired and frustrated by a growing feminist movement, servants began forming their own trade unions and demanding better conditions and rights at work. Feminism and the Servant Problem is the first ever history of how these militant maids and their mistresses joined forces in the struggle for the vote but also clashed over competing class interests. Laura Schwartz uncovers a forgotten history of domestic worker organising and early feminist thinking on reproductive labour, offering a new perspective on the class politics of the suffrage movement and challenging traditional notions of who made up the British working-class.”

Laura Schwartz is Associate Professor of Modern British History at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on the history of British feminism, and is the author of A Serious Endeavour: Gender, Education and Community at St Hugh’s, 1886-2011 (2011), and Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women’s Emancipation in England, 1830-1914 (2013).

Discutante : Rebecca Rogers (Paris-Descartes)

Contact : Fabrice Bensimon fbensimon@free.fr