Rethinking Right-Wing Women - (New Perspectives on the Right) by Clarisse Berthezène & Julie Gottlieb (Paperback)

About the Book

Rethinking Right-wing Women traces the mobilization of women for the UK Conservative Party from the period before their enfranchisement to Theresa May. As party workers and organisers, MPs and leaders, and as voters, women have been fundamental to the success of the Conservative Party.

Book Synopsis

Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and the political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late 19th century. From the Primrose League (est.1883) to Women2Win (est.2005), the party has exploited women's political commitment and their social power from the grass-roots to the heights of the establishment. Yet, although it is the party that extended the equal franchise, had the first woman MP to sit Parliament, and produced the first two women Prime Ministers, the UK Conservative Party has developed political roles for women that jar with feminist and progressive agendas. Conservative women have tended to be more concerned about the fulfilment of women's duties than the realisation of women's rights. This book tackles the ambivalences between women's politicisation and women's emancipation in the history of Britain's most electorally successful and hegemonic political party.

From the Back Cover

Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late-nineteenth century.

Tory women have been effective and energetic party workers, and they have always been crucial for fund-raising, canvassing, electioneering work, and as voters at election time. The history of women in the British Conservative Party has not received the attention it deserves. Tory women have been under-researched for the paradoxical reason that they are off the radar for most male-centred party and political historians, and, due to their presumed anti-feminist views and complicity with the patriarchal establishment, they are not embraced by women's and gender historians. Yet the Conservative Party has been highly successful with women at party level and within the electorate at large. This success helps to explain the party's hegemony for much of the twentieth century, and now into the twenty first century.

Starting in the 1880s, and with the establishment of the Primrose League, women were politicised before they had the vote. Women's successful mobilisation for the party before they became citizens and, later, in the wake of women's suffrage in 1918 and the equal suffrage in 1928, played an instrumental role in the Conservative party's transformation and reinvention from elite to mass democratic party. Leading scholars in this field have come together with the Conservative Party archivist and Baroness Jenkin of Women2win to consider the accommodation some Conservative women made with the evolving women's emancipation agenda, and the strategies they pursued to make the party more gender balanced. This book also emphasises the importance of studying women's leadership and their engagement in non- or even in anti-feminist political projects, and open up new terrains of research and enquiry.

Review Quotes

'The ability of this volume to cover the vast span of time with depth and detail makes it a vital addition for anyone trying to understand the Conservative Party and the women within it. This edited volume gives readers insight into the right-wing women often ignored given the growing connection of women with left-leaning parties. It is particularly timely given the rise in right-wing politics globally. The volume has a little bit for everyone, whether interested in specific Conservative women, the history and nature of the party, or how it has adapted to changing cultural times.'
Journal of Women, Politics & Policy

About the Author

Clarisse Berthezène is Lecturer at the University of Paris Diderot
Julie V. Gottlieb is Reader in Modern History at the University of Sheffield