Gender in Modern Welsh History

Perspectives on Masculinity and Femininity in Wales from 1750 to 2000

Beth Jenkins, Paul O'Leary, Stephanie Ward

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781837720781
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781837720804
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: Social Sciences

This innovative collection offers a reappraisal of gender as a category of analysis in modern Welsh history. Beginning with sex work in the eighteenth century and concluding with women's late twentieth-century anti-nuclear activism, the contributors show how gender has been constructed, represented, performed and experienced by men and women at different times and places throughout Wales's modern past. Using a variety of approaches, the collection interrogates gender as a concept that encompasses both femininity and masculinity, provides fresh perspectives on familiar themes, and demonstrates the value of gender analysis for our understanding of the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Wales. Chapters by leading historians and early career academics each set an agenda for exploring the intersection of gender with nationality, race, class, age and sexuality.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Sex Work and Economies of Makeshift in Wales, c.1750–1830
• 3 Family Matters: War-time Discourses on Women in Wales, 1793–1805
• 4 Masks and Matter: Mining Masculinities in the South Wales Coalfield, 1870–1914
• 5 ‘Can You Look in the Mirror and Say, I See a Man?’ Masculinity and the Labour Movement in South Wales, c.1870–1939
• 6 Spaces and Places of Women’s Social Movements in Wales, 1890–1914
• 7 Nation and Gender: St David, St David’s Day and Masculinity during the Great War
• 8 Exploring Race and Gender in Cardiff, c.1900–c.1945
• 9 Heroic Housewives: Political Worlds, Domesticity and the Welsh Mam in Interwar Wales
• 10 ‘Beware you free, emancipated girls, your warden wouldn’t like it’: Women’s Activism at Swansea University, 1970–1990
• 11 Reflections of Gender in Anti-nuclear Politics in Wales, 1970–2000
• Notes