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The wrong kind of working-class woman? Domestic servants in the British suffrage movement
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Schwartz, Laura (2020) The wrong kind of working-class woman? Domestic servants in the British suffrage movement. In: Purvis, J. and Hannam, J., (eds.) The British Women's Suffrage Campaign : National and International Perspectives. Women's and gender history . Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780367902421
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Official URL: https://www.routledge.com/The-British-Womens-Suffr...
Abstract
This chapter looks at the participation and representation of domestic servants in the suffrage movement, exploring a previously ignored aspect of its internal class dynamics. It is argued that the exclusion of this largest group of women workers from the limited franchise of 1918 (resident servants over the age of 30 continued to be unable to vote) points to longer standing tensions with regards to the position of servants in the pre-war suffrage movement. Although domestic servants were active at the grassroots, they rarely featured in formal suffrage propaganda and public spectacle which tended instead to focus on the industrial and/or sweated woman worker. In this chapter I explore some of the reasons why the figure of the domestic servant proved so difficult to incorporate into suffrage visions of modern and emancipated womanhood. Class conflict often erupted within the movement between suffrage-supporting mistresses and suffrage-supporting maids, reflecting the difficulties of reconciling the emancipatory aspirations of one type of woman worker with those of the women who directly employed them. Militant servants often struggled to assert an independent political voice (even when their suffrage views chimed with those of their employers) due to powerful cultural perceptions of the servant as an extension of the mistress’ personhood. Moreover, the degree to which the public achievements of the suffrage movement depended upon the domestic labour of servants (who kept the homes of suffrage activists while they undertook political activism; provided hospitality to itinerant lecturers; and nursed hunger-strikers back to health) was rarely acknowledged. Designers of digital innovations oftentimes challenge established product meanings as they digitize physical products, such as cars, toothbrushes, and water bottles. A significant problem for product designers, however, is to strike the right balance between the newness and comprehensibility of product meanings. Failure to do so may result in a digital product innovation that is too conventional, or difficult to relate to or understand. Yet, the extant digital product innovation literature pays little, if any, attention to product meaning. To fill this void, this study examines a digital product innovation project in which product designers created a digital theater with product meanings beyond the traditional movie theater. Our theory, grounded in in-depth data collection and analysis, explains how product designers attribute meanings to their products in the process of digital innovation as they enact two meaning-making loops: a reinforcing loop that makes the product meaning comprehensible, and a differentiating loop that captures emerging product meanings. The two loops come together through meaning sedimentation, through which a new core product meaning is created along with the process of digital innovation. Our study contributes to the digital product innovation literature by shedding light on the essential role of meaning-making in innovation and offers an explanatory theory of the process.
| Item Type: | Book Item | ||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Women -- Suffrage -- Great Britain, Women -- Great Britain -- History, Household employees , Household employees -- Political activity -- Great Britain, Suffragists -- Great Britain -- History, Social classes , Working class -- Political activity -- Great Britain | ||||||
| Series Name: | Women's and gender history | ||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
| Place of Publication: | Abingdon | ||||||
| ISBN: | 9780367902421 | ||||||
| Book Title: | The British Women's Suffrage Campaign : National and International Perspectives | ||||||
| Editor: | Purvis, J. and Hannam, J. | ||||||
| Official Date: | 31 December 2020 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in The British Women's Suffrage Campaign National and International Perspectives on December 31, 2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003023296 | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 17 August 2021 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 17 August 2021 | ||||||
| Related URLs: |
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