Revisioning the History of Girls and Women in Britain in the Long 1950s

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Carol Dyhouse for her insightful feedback on the draft of this Special Issue.

Notes on contributors

Penny Tinkler is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. She has written extensively on the history of girls and young women, popular magazines, the feminisation of smoking, photography and photo methods. Her books include: Constructing Girlhood: popular magazines for girls growing up in England 1920–1950 (Taylor & Francis, 1995), Smoke Signals: women, smoking and visual culture in Britain 1880–1980 (Berg, 2006) and Using Photographs in Social and Historical Research (Sage, 2013).

Stephanie Spencer is Reader in the History of Women's Education and Head of Department of Education Studies and Liberal Arts, Faculty of Education, Health and Social Care, University of Winchester, England, UK. She is author of Gender, Work and Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and, with Andrea Jacobs and Camilla Leach, Alumni Voices: The Changing Experience of Higher Education (University of Winchester Press, 2015).

Claire Langhamer is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Sussex. Her publications include Women’s Leisure in England, 1920–1960 (Manchester University Press, 2000) and The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Notes

1 Betty Friedan (1963) The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton) identified the dissatisfaction felt by suburban housewives and has been widely credited with starting the second wave of feminism in the USA.

2 Sue Morgan (2006) Theorising Feminist History: a thirty year retrospective, Women's History Review, 18(3), pp. 381–407, 381.

3 This Special Issue has emerged from a very stimulating Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series on girls and women in Britain in the 1950s which all of the authors contributed to. The seminar series was co-run by the guest editors between 2009 and 2011 and jointly hosted by the University of Manchester, University of Winchester and Sussex University. We would like to thank the ESRC for their support.

4 Kathryn Gleadle (2013) The Imagined Communities of Women's History: current debates and emerging themes, a rhizomatic approach, Women's History Review, 22(4), pp. 524–540.

5 Ibid., p. 535. Gleadle draws on Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (London: Continuum Press). (First published in 1980.)

6 Wendy Webster (1998) Imagining Home: gender, ‘race’ and national identity, 1945–64 (London, UCL Press).

7 Peter Hennessey (1992) Never Again. Britain 1945–51 (London: Cape); Dominic Sandbrook (2010) Never Had It So Good. A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London: Abacus).

8 Stephen Brooke (2001) Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain during the 1950s’, Journal of Social History, 34(4), 773–795, 774.

9 Becky Conekin, Frank Mort & Chris Waters (Eds) (1999) Moments of Modernity. Reconstructing Britain 1945–1964 (London: Rivers Oram Press), p. 3.

10 Janet Finch & Penny Summerfield (1991) Social Reconstruction and the Emergence of Companionate Marriage, 1945–1959, in David Clark (Ed.) Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change. Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne (London: Routledge); Webster, Imagining Home; Birmingham Feminist History Group (1979) Feminism as Femininity in the 1950s, Feminist Review, 3; Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983) The Managed Heart. Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press).

11 Alva Myrdal & Viola Klein. (1956) Women's Two Roles: home and work (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).