Susan Raven and Alison Weir Women in History: Thirty-five centuries of Feminine Achievement, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981, £8.95, illustrated
From Hatshepsut, Egyptian pharaoh in 1500 BC, to Bernadette McAliskey and the attempt on her life in January 1981, the authors trace the lives of about 500 women, who, in their opinion, have made outstanding contributions in their own right, Their claims to fame are diverse: campaigners for women's suffrage, reform of prisons and mental hospitals, abolition of slavery, improvements in girls' education, the rights of divorced and married women, the right to be a doctor or engineer, and against prostitution laws; as well as women scientists, explorers, artists and sportswomen.
Many women combined several activities and interests, Dr Aletta Jacobs opened the world's first contraceptive clinic in Amsterdam in 1882, but was also a suffragist, pacifist and campaigner for prison [illegible] and laws to protect children and Asian women. In addition she waged a twenty year campaign for employers to provide seats for shop assistants to alleviate gynaecological problems. Emily Faithfull set up all-women printing presses to print suffragist and ILP newspapers. The mountaineer, Fanny Workman, was photographed reading the headline 'Votes for Women' 21,000 feet up in the Himalayas in 1912.
Women also made personal protests against oppressive traditions. Muslim women removed their veils, Western women wore trousers or dressed as men to avoid ridicule in traditional male jobs; others included protests against marriage laws in their wedding ceremonies.
Women faced obstacles and hardship in achieving their aims, Annie B[illegible] lost custody of her children for advocating contraception, others cared for many children and dependents singlehanded: single and divorced women were ostracised and many suffered physical attacks and derision.
Frequently women achieved most before marriage or after separation or their husband's death — sometimes when elderly, often through self-education or in spite of illiteracy. Many women were denied credit for their creative achievements: male artists passed off the works of female assistants as their own; Colette's first husband imprisoned her and published her novels under his name; and Catherine Greene invented 'Eli Whitney's Cotton gin' but was denied any benefit because women could not apply for patents.
The majority of women discussed in this book were white and usually wealthy. Historical records in Europe and North America are generally more accessible, and while some Asian women appear very few African women are mentioned. That is the problem with this sort of approach.
Although the authors attempt to draw links between the achievements of women in different fields, they appear as exceptional and isolated individuals, unrepresentative of their contemporaries and shedding little light on the anonymous lives of ordinary women coping with everyday problems of work, poverty and war. We do not discover the involvement of women, children and men in popular movements led by such women. Significant groups of women, such as the suffrage societies of working class women who campaigned through the labour movement for the vote, are passed over because they did not produce sufficiently outstanding leaders.
The authors point to the lack of involvement in post-revolutionary societies of women who played important part in the revolutions which established them. But while mentioning Ekaterina Furtseva, the only women in the inner circle of the Kremlin, they overlook Krupskaya and her achievements in Soviet education after the revolution and fail to mention Kollontai's proposals for maternity clinics, maternity leave, easy divorce, the abolition of illegitimacy and other measures to assist women's involvement in society. Perhaps in the interest of brevity, Sylvia Pankhurst's and Rosa Luxemburg's opposition to the First World War as a capitalist war is rather inaccurately described as pacifism.
While brief summaries are given of women's writings, the book would have been more useful for reference if the authors had listed more detailed biographies of the women concerned. However, it does extend the number of exceptional women about whom something is known.