We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The right to professional employment, and the training and education that this necessitated, had been central demands of British feminism since the 1860s. Financial independence and the fulfilment of creative potential were counterposed to the enforced idleness and dependencies of the middle-class home. The association of emancipation with the public world of work retained a powerful hold over the feminist imagination into the twentieth century, and the suffrage movement often pointed to women’s labour as the basis for their claim to citizenship. This rhetoric of work was seen to unite the interests of middle-class professional women and their working-class sisters. There was much uncertainty, however, over whether domestic labour ought to be included in this vision of ennobling and liberating work. The desire to free women from the burden of housework was not simply about protecting them from overwork, or allowing them to do other work, but often was articulated as the right to do better work. This chapter examines two debates in the suffrage movement that posed this question particularly sharply: first, those surrounding the proposal for the endowment of motherhood; second, the controversy over the course in Home Science and Economics at Kings College for Women.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.