Description: Could women be feminist without feminism? Could they foster feminist activism without a movement or an ideology? Could they recraft ways of being female without a plan? Feminist Lives adopts a woman-centred approach to explore these questions and to understand how British women charted a new way of being female in the three decades before the Women's Liberation Movement. By focusing on the 'transition' generation of women who were born in the long 1940s and who grew to maturity in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the book demonstrates that it was they who developed the aspirational model of womanhood that then emerged after 1970 as the norm amongst women in the global north.
In doing so, Feminist Lives seeks to fill 'the feminist history gap', countering a narrative that has for too long neglected this generation of women as fusty and failing, and as just not feminist enough. Using women's voices as the book's evidential and emotional core as they describe themselves, their relationships, their feelings and actions, this volume analyses the modes by which women constructed a modern self, built upon new ways of living, feeling, and being.Review Quotes: "Grounded in an impressive base of research that is strong on oral history, this book focuses on the era when women had not yet developed a feminist ideology, yet took advantage of expanded educational opportunities and state provisioning in the postwar years to fashion new lives. Recommended." -- Choice
"This book is a reminder of the impressive work that Abrams' has carried out over the past two decades to forge a framework for understanding how people, especially women, talk about their lives. Her body of evidence is rich for its impressive insight into the personal lives of white women in Britain, offering glimpses into their varied histories and subjectivities." -- Jessica White, Family & Community History"This is a book that should be read by all practising oral historians because of its nuanced theoretical and analytic approach to oral research and gendered perspectives. While Abrams is careful to locate her impressive history of post-war women within the specific circumstances of Britain, there is much that is relevant to Australia, where British cultural norms remained dominant. Indeed, the key themes of Feminist Lives resonate with the societal and personal changes documented in the oral histories of Australian women during the same decades." -- Kate Darian-Smith, Studies in Oral History"Feminist Lives is richly researched and draws on an impressive array of primary sources." -- Eve Worth, Journal of British Studies