Preliminary Programme

The concept of ‘experience’ bridges discourses, structures and individual agency, and therefore it carries potential for new insights on society. This paper explores the ways in which the history of experiences as a methodological approach can be combined with ‘gender’ as an analytical tool.

The paper focuses on individual experiences of dirt (as opposed to cleanliness) in Finnish poorhouses at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In general, poorhouses offered complex and often contradictory surroundings for experiencing dirt. On the one hand, the conditions in a poorhouse were to be of a standard below that of an average labourer’s household to prevent an influx of paupers. In some institutions, then, things such as bath, washing-up bowls, soap and even an adequate supply of clean water were considered an unnecessary ‘luxury’. On other hand, poorhouses were also envisioned as places for rudimentary civic education, which is why they were expected to stand out favourably from the humble dwellings of the rural poor in terms of cleanliness.

Individual experiences are traced in the correspondence between local-level actors and state poor relief authorities, and in oral history material. As a whole, source material contains information on the experiences of authorities and poorhouse staff members, but also on the experiences of the poor. The paper asks, whether ‘gender’ is a meaningful tool for categorising these experiences – and whether a focus on ‘experiences’ yields new information on gendered understandings of dirt (and cleanliness), and the gendered division of labour. (Show less)

Cultural understandings of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault have shifted considerably since the 1960s in the United Kingdom and more widely. Over forty years before the emergence of the ‘Me Too’ movement, feminist consciousness raising in the 1970s developed as part of the wider Women’s Movement. In the 1980s and ‘90s therapeutic discourses which positioned childhood sexual abuse as a deeply formative event entered into popular consciousness. This paper investigates how changing discourses around sexual abuse, harassment and assault are navigated by British women in later life when they narrate experiences that occurred in their youth in the 1960s and early 1970s. Experiences of unwanted sexual attentions were commonplace across our sample of seventy women. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we unpick and explain how the women respond to recent discourses. We identify six sites of youth that are relevant to understanding their narratives: home; school; local outdoor places; workplaces; heterosexual intimacies; independent travel. These sites are associated with different points on a ‘girl to woman’ register, tracing a pathway from the immaturity and innocence of girlhood, through the liminal state of young womanhood, and into mature womanhood. How interviewees positioned themselves on this register is suggestive of how they understood their youthful selves in different sites, and how within these sites, they understood their past experiences of unwanted sexual attentions. We argue that what is at stake for the women in how they navigate shifting discourses is narrating a version of themselves that is morally responsible and agentic. (Show less)

The years that passed between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the Red Stockings Movement in Iceland in 1970 have until recently been viewed as a “stagnated” period, whereas in fact various transformations were under way both on local and transnational level. Old ideas about women’s role as housewives were being questioned, reshaped and moulded in conflicting discourses – and eventually rejected. Women were gradually stepping outside of their roles as mothers and housewives, arguing for being accepted as active citizens at all societal levels. Yet the home and family remained their responsibility and officially the majority of women were defined as housewives and thus dependent on their husbands, the breadwinner.
The concept of citizenship was increasingly questioned by women in the 1940s and 1950s. Were they legitimate agents in society or extensions to their husbands? The housewife ideology, which had dominated the interwar period, was in crisis – what was the role of women in society if not as nurturing mothers and wives? For some women these new ideas meant crisis, not only for women but society.
This paper focuses on conflicting ideologies on housewives and their role in society in Iceland in 1940-1970. By using memoirs and journals published by the two major women’s associations in Iceland, The Women’s Rights Association and the more conservative Iceland’s Women’s Association, I will demonstrate conflicting discourse on housewifery and how women were negotiatating their place in society. Both these organizations published magazines promoting women’s agency, whether as housewives or in the cultural and political arena that was opening up for women. Furthermore, both associations were active in international women’s organizations, which opens up for a study of transnational interactions.
This paper is a part of a ongoing research project In the Wake of Suffrage. Icelandic Women as cultural and political agents 1915-2015, funded by Rannís, the Icelandic Research Fund. (Show less)