Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska. Women in Twentieth-Century Britain. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2001. xiii + 378 pp. $24.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-582-40480-9.

Reviewed by Fiona Montgomery (Department of Women's Studies, Edge Hill College of Higher Education)
Published on H-Albion (December, 2001)

The aim of Women in Twentieth Century Britain is to demonstrate the ways in which widening opportunities for women in the twentieth century--in control over their own fertility, in education, and in the labour market--were hampered by the continuing of traditional stereotypes which consigned women to a domestic setting and thereby enabled men to keep a dominant position in society. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska has assembled a group of well-known historians to provide twenty-one chapters which deal with four main areas of women's experience: The Life Course; Work Paid and Unpaid; Culture, Consumption and Transgression; and the State and Citizenship, (Zweiniger-Bargielowska herself contributes three chapters).

This is an excellent approach; unfortunately it proves to be over-ambitious since each chapter is limited at most to a mere fifteen to sixteen pages and therefore can do little but scratch the subject of the topic. The limitations of this approach are immediately obvious. Billie Melman makes a brave attempt to sum up 'Women's History and Historiography 1900-2000'. But her allocated thirteen pages of text ensures that the chapter becomes rather generalised and simplistic with some odd judgements. She overemphasizes the effect on mainstream history of studies by women historians in the early twentieth century. Furthermore there is the feeling that editing to reach the desired number of words has led to the removal of essential elaboration e.g. "While the move to gender history has been driven precisely by the ambition to locate women in a 'general' history, at the same time women have become relative. This is analogous to, albeit different from, the process that occurred during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the result of the challenge that research on women as historical subjects issued to history" (p. 29). Nevertheless, her Bibliographical Note is excellent and would allow anyone to fill in and trace all the main themes in the development of women's history.

Despite the brevity of contributions, there is much of interest here. To highlight simply a few of the chapters. Lesley Hall provides a succinct discussion of sexuality. Penny Tinkler shows how girls' education was shaped by "gender and social class, as well as race, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexuality and locality" (p. 48). In the 1980s rising unemployment and the decline of the youth labour movement, meant that there was no longer a smooth transition between school and work. By the end of the century however, more girls were continuing with some form of education and training after the age of sixteen. Dyhouse provides a good analysis of women in higher education and McCloskey does similar for women's paid work. This is not a conventional social history of women, rather it is an exposition of women's experiences, though not with the aim of giving voice to women. Thus the chapters on "Ageing--Older Women" and "Prostitution" would have been enhanced by the use of oral history. Thane's chapter on "Ageing" however serves to remind that not all the aged are dependent on the community; many live active lives, and continue, as they have done throughout the entire century, to make a valuable contribution not simply to their own families but also to society and the economy.

For those interested in politics and citizenship, part 4 'The State and Citizenship' provides an excellent summary of the women's political movement with contributions by well-known historians. Nor is 'Race' and 'Ethnicity' ignored, Webster produces a thought-provoking chapter which is full of insight and aptly begins with the first verse of Jackie Kay's poem, "So You Think I'm a Mule'. In many ways, this is the section of the book which works best, largely because most chapters deal with a much shorter time span.

All in all, there is something of interest for everyone here. Its key strength lies in its comprehensive coverage of topic. The text is illustrated with pictures, comic strips and charts. There is a useful list of key dates and events. Each chapter contains a section on further reading that varies in length and usefulness. It is nevertheless purely an introductory text, and as far as an audience is concerned, it is presumably being pitched at the first year undergraduate of Women's Studies and Women's History. Its greatest appeal however may be to the general reader. Although there is no overall concluding chapter, and one would have been useful, as Zweiniger-Bargielowska notes in her Introduction, "Women in 2000 have many more choices and opportunities than women in 1900 but genuine equality between men and women remains elusive" (p. 1).

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Citation: Fiona Montgomery. Review of Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina, Women in Twentieth-Century Britain. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. December, 2001.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=5757

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