Feminism and the Servant Problem

The wrong kind of working-class woman? Domestic servants in the British Suffrage Movement

“…Moreover, servants' labour made a crucial contribution to the struggle for the vote, running the homes and providing for the material needs of middle-class women who wished to devote as much time as possible to the Cause; though the political importance of this labour was rarely acknowledged. 75 Domestic labour was certainly not invisible to the suffrage movement. Many of its activists sought to highlight the important role played by women in the home and the back breaking labour that this entailed.…”

“…32 More broadly, although working for a suffrage-supporting mistress made it easier for servants to engage in the struggle for the vote, there is evidence to indicate that such servants' suffrage activism involved at least a degree of agency. 33 The Blathwayt family are well known within suffrage historiography as prominent members of the WSPU who hosted many leading suffrage activists in their comfortable home Eagle House in the Somerset village of Batheaston. 34 Yet little has ever been written about how their servants were also active supporters of votes for women.…”

“…It provoked much opposition from mistresses and maids who resented having to make financial contributions, and from many women's suffrage and trade union organisations who felt that it was a poorly designed piece of legislation that discriminated against women. 66 The series of images focusing on the 'servant tax' is revealingly anomalous when compared to much other suffrage propaganda. The cartoon, published in the WFL's newspaper the Vote, depicts domestic workers on a protest march, wielding their brooms and dustpan brushes in a threatening manner at the suited men cowering in front of them.…”

Women's Suffrage, Political Economy, and the Transatlantic Birth Strike Movement, 1911–1920

“…Schwartz wrote that 'in many ways, the demand for endowment of motherhood was the closest that "first wave" feminism came to insisting that domestic labour be treated on an equal basis with "productive" work'. 67 Analysing the WFL's interest in endowment alongside their interest in birth striking points to new connections between female enfranchisement and socialistfeminist endeavours to collapse the distinction between productive and reproductive labour.…”

Forms of care for children up to the age of three — solutions preferred by parents (empirical research results)

“…In res earch papers and analytical publications, childcare issues are mainly present in three contexts: -the labour market, where parents' caring responsibilities for young children are presented primarily in the context of reconciling family and professional roles (e.g., Chieregato, 2020;Sadowska-Snarska, 2007;Tomaszewska-Lipiec, 2014), -gender equality, when childcare organization is recognized as an important instrument for shaping equal rights and opportunities in different areas of social and economic life (e.g., Charkiewicz & Zachorowska-Mazurkiewicz, 2019;Kurowska et al, 2016, pp. 109-207;Szelewa, 2019a;Schwartz, 2019;Wódz & Klimczak, 2020, pp. 9-32).…”