Bocking-Welch, A., Huzzey, R., Leston-Bandeira, C. et al. (1 more author) (2024) Women’s campaigning, petitioning, and grassroots activism, 1945–1997. Women's History Review. ISSN 0961-2025
Abstract
Petitioning provided a flexible repertoire for women’s political activity in the decades after 1945. Petitioning was a popular, widespread practice: aside from voting, signing a petition was one of the few political activities that engaged a majority of women. Building on a long tradition of British women as active petitioners, petitioning was used by a variety of different groups—local action groups, voluntary associations, political parties, pressure groups, and radical social movements, including those associated with the Women’s Liberation Movement. Connecting formal and informal politics, petitioning was a relatively cheap, accessible form of political activity that enabled activism. In particular, the practices associated with name-signing created informal, temporary political spaces for women. Petitioning also provided a mechanism for representation and making representative claims to authority on behalf of women. The media-friendly spectacle of presenting petitions to authority was useful for attracting publicity as a range of activists, including conservative moral campaigners like Mary Whitehouse realised. The flexibility of petitioning explain its popularity as a form of political participation for women, particularly in facilitating local, informal activity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Political participation; women’s activism; representation; representative claims; political spaces; gender; petitioning |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council) RF220116 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 30 Aug 2024 14:18 |
Last Modified: | 30 Aug 2024 14:19 |
Published Version: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612... |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09612025.2024.2373507 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:216568 |
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