Working Class Women
Working Class Attitudes Towards Feminism and Labour: Coventry Women's Experiences of Paid Work 1970-1985
Skye Shepherd, MA student, History
This project explores how women in Coventry related to feminist concepts of work, including ideas surrounding what constituted “women’s work”, workplace organisation, and equal pay. It explores how women who may not have been part of the organised feminist movement nonetheless engaged with the gender and class politics of the time, often on the level of day-to-day interaction. Informed by newer research conceptualising ‘feminism’ as a broader project rather than a specific identity, we can see how women who were often left to the periphery were experiencing the same kinds of shifting attitudes and generational change.
In addition to archival materials, the project includes oral history interviews with women who were working in Coventry during the 1970s and early 1980s. These interviews provide the opportunity for reflectiveness and add a necessary richness and complexity to the narratives of the time.
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