The matriarchs of England's cooperative movement : a study in gender politics and female leadership, 1883-1921
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The matriarchs of England's cooperative movement : a study in gender politics and female leadership, 1883-1921
(Contributions in labor studies, no. 56)
Greenwood Press, 2000
Available at 8 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
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  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Current thinking considers the Women's Cooperative Guild within the English Cooperative Movement to have been an independent and democratically run organization whose leaders built sisterhood across class lines and achieved many benefits for married working-class women. This study of the dynamics of gender within the movement between 1883 and 1921 arrives at different conclusions. Blaszak examines what freedoms of speech and activity women were permitted within the movement, as well as what resources they were given to accomplish their tasks. Ultimately, the parameters set by the men would determine the type of female leadership that emerged and whether it was able to realize its feminist and utopian agendas.
Setting the organization's activities within the context of gender relations in the Cooperative Movement, Blaszak finds that the Guild was much more dependent and much less democratically directed than has usually been supposed. Restrictions established by male cooperators and enhanced by the realities of working-class life turned the Guild into a clique dominated by a few. Even the Guild's most revered leader, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, found it impossible to escape the gendered socio-economic circumstances in which she labored at her ministry to improve the lives of working-class women. Consequently, her leadership inadvertently assisted male cooperators in their attempts to limit possibilities for women.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Women in the English Cooperative Movement
Women's Space/Women's Place
The "Woman's Corner" of the Co-operative News
The Gendered Geography of the Cooperative Movement
Angels in the Store
The Early Leaders of the Women's Cooperative Guild
Margaret Llewelyn Davies: A Woman with a Mission
The Dysfunctional Commonwealth
Rent at the Seams: Sisterhood in the Women's Cooperative Guild
The Battle between the Sexes in the Cooperative Movement
Conclusion
Contradictions and Conflicts
Bibliography
Index
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