Hidden From History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Agai

by Sheila Rowbotham

In this study of women from the Puritan revolution to the 1930s, the author shows how class and sex, work and family, personal life and social pressures have shaped and hindered women's struggles for equality.

Genres: Feminism, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Womens

182 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Sheila Rowbotham is a British socialist feminist theorist and writer.

Rowbotham was born in Leeds (in present-day West Yorkshire), the daughter of a salesman for an engineering company and an office clerk. From an early age, she was deeply interested in history. She has written that traditional political history "left her cold", but she credited Olga Wilkinson, one of her teachers, with encouraging her interest in social history by showing that history "belonged to the present, not to the history textbooks".

Rowbotham attended St Hilda's College at Oxford and then the University of London. She began her working life as a teacher in comprehensive schools and institutes of higher or Adult education. While attending St. Hilda's College, Rowbotham found her syllabus with its heavy focus on political history to be of no interest to her. Through her involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and various socialist circles including the Labour Party's youth wing, the Young Socialists, Rowbotham was introduced to Karl Marx's ideas. Already on the left, Rowbotham was converted to Marxism. Soon disenchanted with the direction of party politics she immersed herself in a variety of left-wing campaigns, including writing for the radical political newspaper Black Dwarf. In the 1960s, Rowbotham was one of the founders and leaders of the History Workshop movement associated with Ruskin College.

Towards the end of the 1960s she had become involved in the growing Women’s Liberation Movement (also known as Second-wave feminism) and, in 1969, published her influential pamphlet "Women's Liberation and the New Politics", which argued that Socialist theory needed to consider the oppression of women in cultural as well as economic terms. She was heavily involved in the conference Beyond the Fragments (eventually a book), which attempted to draw together democratic socialist and socialist feminist currents in Britain. Between 1983 and 1986, Rowbotham served as the editor of Jobs for Change, the newspaper of the Greater London Council.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

While very information dense and full of interesting first-hand accounts of rallies and strikes, what I wanted to know was - what about the women of color? What about their experiences during these years and especially after slavery was abolished in the UK? This topic wasn't covered at all, not even mentioning if there were records about it or not.
I did learn a lot about our struggles, but I feel like this book is barely scratching the surface, so I'd recommend researching and continuing with further reading about the collective efforts, not just the white feminist movement.

[Demi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread for my masters. Informative and a great broad analysis of women’s history.

[Isidora Durán · Rating 4 out of 5]

“[She] dreamed in 1935 of a new society of sexual sympathy and candour, economic justice and international peace, stretching out from the bodies and beds of human lovers … the dream remains to be realised.”

This book deepened my understanding of Marxist feminism ten-fold

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay.. because the timespan is so ambitious the chapters corresponding to each period are very short. I think it would've been better to focus on a specific period of time, because often it just lists the most relevant figures from a time and then moves onto the next one, rather than providing any interesting analysis. This did make it a little dry. Also, I was surprised by a lot of reviews saying that you would need to be familiar with history to read this. To me, this would be best as an introductory/supplementary text. Rowbotham quotes heavily from Marx and Engels in the middle of the book- I've already read quite a few of the texts she referred to, I would've really preferred some more original thoughts and connections rather than repetition.

[Shuggy L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has a lot of detailed information in it about the British trade union movement and women’s working role in the industrial Britain.

To enjoy it properly, you probably need a fairly good grounding in British social history, especially around the turn of the twentieth century.

More background information would have been helpful but you get a sense of the upper class oppression of working people and their difficulties in effecting meaningful change in society.

[bellatrix begins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitabın kapsadığı dönem 1930'da sonlansa da, kadın hakları hakkında 2025 yılında bile konuşulmaya, tartışılmaya devam edilen, hatta tartışma biçimi dahi aynı olan konulara rastlamak insanı yaralıyor. Bu oldukça kişisel notun haricinde, kitabın feminizmin tarihine yeni giriş yapmış biri için oldukça bilgilendirici ve kafa açıcı olduğunu söylemek isterim.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very academic (read: dry), but with some interesting tidbits of information. While a good reminder of how far we've come (although this focused on Great Britain not the US), the book focused on socialism and its intersection with feminism much more than I expected.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wish that I liked this, but to be honest I found it quite dry. Perhaps better suited to people with a strong background in British working class history.

[Michelle Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

chapter 6 - New Means of Resisting