Changing Roles: Women After the Great War

During the 1920s, women in the UK were not just docile housewives. They took on new roles, fought against misogyny, and made a lasting impact on global affairs. "Changing Roles: Women in Britain, 1918-1928" reveals the stories of ordinary and extraordinary women who challenged the status quo and shook the Establishment.

Format: Hardback
Length: 216 pages
Publication date: 20 October 2021
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Graverobbers, prime-movers in geopolitics, jailbirds, and international football celebrities were not typically associated with women in the 1920s. However, the accepted narrative of women returning docilely to the domestic cage at the end of the First World War has become part of this narrative. Like many war and immediate post-war myths, it contains some truth, but the story of women between 1918 and 1928 is much more complex, often more positive, and certainly far more interesting than previously suggested.

Changing Roles explores some of the women who forged new identities for themselves while exploring how their own or their loved ones' wartime experiences influenced the roles they stepped into, sometimes reluctantly, frequently enthusiastically, and often successfully. It explores how women fought back against the misogynistic climate of the 1920s, used the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act to achieve their goals, played their part as full citizens, and how the legacy of their global endeavors, achievements, and occasional failures is still with us today, spreading far beyond our shores.

By telling the stories of both ordinary and extraordinary women whose actions disturbed the status quo, shook the Establishment to its core, and sent shock waves across the Atlantic, this book presents a cast of fascinating characters ranging from crowned heads to girl gangs, businesswomen to philanthropists, inviting readers to exclaim, "Gosh, I never knew that!"

Weight: 506g
Dimension: 165 x 241 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526774262