The Centre for the History of the Sciences will welcome Dr Pratricia Fara of the University of Cambridge to deliver the fourth annual HG Wells Lecture. Dr Fara’s lecture will take place on Wednesday 4 March at 17.15 in Keynes Lecture Theatre 5 on the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus and will be followed by a drinks reception.
Abstract:
‘Fighting for the Vote: Science and Suffrage in WW1’
Inspired by utopian dreams, H G Wells imagined a future characterized by science, equality and justice – and in 1919, the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly, ‘The war revolutionised the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free.’ Their optimism was premature. World War I did benefit British women by enabling them to take on traditionally male roles in science, engineering and medicine. But even though women over 30 gained the right to vote, conventional hierarchies were rapidly re-established after the Armistice. Concentrating mainly on a small group of well-qualified scientific and medical women, marginalized at the time and also in the secondary literature, I review the attitudes they experienced and the work they undertook during and immediately after the War.
Further details can be found on the School of History’s Events Calendar.
2 comments
Apologies for not spotting this comment earlier! You can watch the lecture yourself here.
Researching women in WW1 I have become increasingly aware that women failed to build upon the considerable progress they made during the First World War. I would be most interested in hearing how the lecture went.