Rethinking Right-wing Women : Gender and the Conservative Party, 1880s to the Present

Historians and political scientists have deemed the twentieth century 'the Conservative Century', owing to the electoral and cultural dominance of the Conservative Party in Britain. This book traces the relationship among women, gender and the Conservative Party from the 1880s to the present, and thereby seeks to fill that gap. A gender inclusive approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of political machinations, power and the unprecedented popularity of both conservatism and unionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The suffragette Christabel Pankhurst, was regarded as a charismatic, radical figure, who was the co-leader of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a notorious suffrage organization campaigning for the parliamentary vote for women in Edwardian Britain. In 1928 Lady Iveagh, Vice-Chairman of the National Union of Conservative Associations (NUCA), claimed that one million women were members of the Conservative Party. The book focuses on how the Primrose League re-made itself for its female members between 1914 and 1932. It shows that the Conservative Party leadership and male candidates were keen to present themselves as the champions of home interests, playing up their family-man credentials against their rowdy electoral culture of Labour. The book also examines inquires how the deliberate choice of middlebrow rhetoric as well as the language of citizenship enabled Conservative women to construct a cross-class language of democracy. It explores British conservatism, highlighting the history of the Tory Party as part of the study of women and their sectional interest in 'the politics of gender'. Front matter Contents List of figures and tables Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction ‘Open the eyes of England’: female unionism and conservatism, 1886–1914 Christabel Pankhurst: a Conservative suffragette? At the heart of the party? The women’s Conservative organisation in the age of partial suffrage, 1914–28 Conservative women and the Primrose League’s struggle for survival, 1914–32 Modes and models of Conservative women’s leadership in the 1930s The middlebrow and the making of a ‘new common sense’: women’s voluntarism, Conservative politics and representations of womanhood Churchill, women, and the politics of gender ‘The statutory woman whose main task was to explore what women ... were likely to think’: Margaret Thatcher and women’s politics in the 1950s and 1960s Conservatism, gender and the politics of everyday life, 1950s–1980s Feminist responses to Thatcher and Thatcherism The (feminised) contemporary Conservative Party Conserving Conservative women: a view from the archives Women2Win and the feminisation of the UK Conservative Party Index Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and the political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late 19th century. From the Primrose League (est. 1883) to Women2Win (est. 2005), the party has exploited women's political commitment and their social power from the grass-roots to the heights of the establishment. Yet, although it is the party that extended the equal franchise, had the first woman MP to sit Parliament, and produced the first two women Prime Ministers, the UK Conservative Party has developed political roles for women that jar with feminist and progressive agendas. Conservative women have tended to be more concerned about the fulfilment of women's duties than the realisation of women's rights. This book tackles the ambivalences between women's politicisation and women's emancipation in the history of Britain's most electorally successful and hegemonic political party Rethinking Right-wing Women traces the mobilization of women for the UK Conservative Party from the period before their enfranchisement to Theresa May. As party workers and organisers, MPs and leaders, and as voters, women have been fundamental to the success of the Conservative Party.