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Women's Experience in Britain: Race, Class and Gender since 1945

Module description

The period since 1945 has been one of unprecedented flux in the lives of women in Britain. Women’s relationship to education and employment, the state, and marriage and motherhood have dramatically shifted. On this module you will analyse why there has been such a rapid pace of change and what its implications are for the wider history of Britain in this period. You will also examine what the interrelationship is between these changes in women’s lives and feminist activism. Does feminism cause or reflect shifts in women’s lives? And why, even during this period of dynamic change, have so many aspects of gendered experience and expectation remained so sticky? The module will take an intersectional approach to the category of ‘woman’, analysing it through the lens of key axes such as race, class, sexuality, and generation. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

The aims of this module are for you:

• To understand the dynamic changes in women’s lives in this period and to interrogate the relationship between women’s experiences and feminist movements.
• To introduce you to intersectional theory and how we apply it to historical understandings of women’s lives.
• To encourage you to think about the ways in which centring women’s experience shifts our perspective on key themes in recent British history.
• To develop the skill of historicising contemporary events and how to bring together historiographical research with the research of other disciplines such as sociology and cultural studies.
• To engage in-depth with the vast array of source material that is available on this topic: ranging from oral history collections; to policy reports; to social media. The module also offers the possibility of creating your own primary source material on this topic due to its contemporary nature.
• To build research, analytical, interpretative and communication skills that can be applied in further academic studies or in graduate careers, in particular in policy and the civil service, through engaging with the complexities of women’s lives.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate knowledge of the different sources available for the study of women’s lives in Britain since 1945, together with a very close specialist knowledge of sources in seminar presentations and written work
• 2. Demonstrate the ability to analyse the complex diversity of the sources studied

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Ability to understand and deploy relevant historical terminology in a comprehensible manner
• 4. Ability to follow the changing course of women’s lives in the period since 1945

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Independent and autonomous study and group work, including presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 6. Ability to digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument
• 7. Ability to present complex arguments orally

Syllabus plan

While the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Domesticity and its discontents in the 1950s
• Women and models of social class and mobility
• Second Wave Feminism
• The welfare state
• Having it all? Women in the 1990s
• Motherhood and Fatherhood
• LGBT+ Activism
• Gendering the economy
• Post-feminism and the media in the 2000s
• Gen Z women and social media
• Women’s relationship to education and employment
• Intersectionality
• Women in the post-imperial context

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scarfe, The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (Virago, 1985)
• Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman (Virago, 1986)
• Amrit Wilson, Dreams, Questions, Struggles: South Asian Women in Britain (Pluto, 2006)
• Nicola Horlick, Can you really have it all? (Pan, 1998)
• Pearl Jephcott, Married Women Working (1962)
• Rowbotham, Segal, Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism (Merlin, 1979)
• Women’s Budget Group, Policy Briefing: Migrant Women and the Economy (2020)
• Hansard Society Commission, Report on Women at the Top (London, 1990).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – Faculty to provide hyperlink to appropriate pages
• Sisterhood & After: The Women’s Liberation Oral History British Library Oral Project
• Mass Observation Archive Online
• Women’s Budget Group
• Hansard
• Women’s Magazine Archive

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Women’s Library at LSE
• The Feminist Library at Bishopsgate
• Women’s Health Library at Wellcome
• Heart of the Race: Oral Histories of the Black Women’s Movement held at the Black Cultural Archives, London

Key words search

Women, Britain, Class, Race, Gender, Intersectionality, Contemporary