Gender, leisure and marriage in a working-class community, 1939-1960

Labour History Review

Volumn 74, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 185-198

  Williamson, Margaret ^a  

^a TEESSIDE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Cleveland district; Gender; Marriage; Oral testimonies; Women; Working class communities; Working class leisure

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950776879     PISSN: 09615652     EISSN: 17458188     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/174581809X451881     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. See for example R. Deem, All Work and No Play: the Sociology of Women and Leisure (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986)
2. E. Green, S. Hebron and D. Woodward, Women's Leisure: What Leisure? (London: Macmillan, 1990)
3. C. Langhamer, Women's Leisure in England 1920-60 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)
4. C. M. Parratt, 'More Than Mere Amusement': Working-Class Women's Leisure in England, 1750-1914 (Boston: NorthEastern University Press, 2001)
5. Relative Freedoms: Women and Leisure, ed. by E. Wimbush and M. Talbot (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1988). Many historians have explored aspects of women's leisure in their wider studies
6. See for example E. Roberts, A Woman's Place: an Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890-1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)
7. Research on the family as context for leisure is perhaps more advanced in sociological rather than historical studies, as refl ected in the special issue on Leisure and Families, Journal of Leisure Research 29, 1 (1997)
8. and the more recent special issue on Fathering through Leisure, Leisure Studies, 25, 2 (2006)
9. See J. Finch and P. Summerfi eld, 'Social reconstruction and the emergence of companionate marriage 1945-59', in Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change, ed. by D. Clark (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 7-32
10. C. Langhamer, 'The meanings of home in postwar Britain', Journal of Contemporary History, 40, 3 (2005), 341-62
11. E. Roberts, Women and Families: an Oral History, 1940-1970 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), chapter 6
12. P. Summerfi eld, 'Women in Britain since 1945: companionate marriage and the double burden', in Understanding Post-War British Society, ed. by J. Obelkevich and P. Catterall (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 58-69
13. Finch and Summerfi eld , 'Social reconstruction', p. 7
14. The Summary Procedures (Domestic Proceedings) Act in 1937 meant that newspapers were limited to reporting a bare outline of separation and maintenance cases in magistrates' courts. See G. K. Behlmer, Friends of the Family: the English Home and its Guardians, 1850-1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 255
15. P. Summerfi eld, Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 17
16. P. Summerfi eld, Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives (Ibid., p.18
17. H. Cunningham, 'Leisure and culture', in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, ed. by F. M. L. Thompson 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), vol. II, p. 317
18. See for example, A. Light, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991)
19. R. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918-1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
20. Green, Hebron and Woodward, Women's Leisure, p. 49
21. J. Klein, Samples from English Cultures (London: Routledge, 1965), p. 283
22. Summerfi eld, 'Women in Britain since 1945', p. 59
23. Roberts, Women and Families, p. 95
24. N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life: an Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1956), p. 183
25. N. Dennis, F. Henriques and C. Slaughter, Coal is our Life: an Analysis of a Yorkshire Mining Community (Ibid., p. 183
26. C. Brackenridge and D. Woodward, 'Gender inequalities in leisure and sport in post-war Britain', in Obelkevich and Catterall, Understanding Post-War British Society, pp. 192-203
27. Green et al., Women's Leisure, chapter 3
28. Langhamer, Women's Leisure
29. Roberts, A Woman's Place, chapter 6
30. A. Davies, Leisure, Gender and Poverty: Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester, 1900-1939 (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992)
31. Deem, All Work and No Play
32. Green et al., Women's Leisure
33. D. Woodward and E. Green, '"Not tonight, dear!" The social control of women's leisure', in Relative Freedoms, ed. by Wimbush and Talbot, pp. 131-146
34. For more information on the area, see M. Williamson, Partnership and Power: the Organisation of Gender Roles in the East Cleveland Mining Communities 1918-1964 (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Teesside, 1997)
35. M. Chase and M. Whyman, Heartbreak Hill (Redcar: Cleveland County Council and Langbaurgh on Tees Borough Council, 1991)
36. M. Williamson, 'I'm going to get a job at the factory: attitudes to women's employment in a mining community, 1945-65', Women's History Review, 12, 3 (2003), pp. 407-21
37. J. Obelkevich, 'Consumption', in Understanding Post-War British Society, ed. by Obelkevich and Catterall, pp. 141-54
38. D. Gilbert, 'Imagined communities and mining communities', Labour History Review, 66, 2 (1995), 47-55
39. F. Measham and S. Allen, 'In defence of home and hearth? Families, friendships and feminism in mining communities', Journal of Gender Studies 3, 2 (1994), 31-45
40. E. Green and S. Hebron, 'Leisure and male partners', in Relative Freedoms, ed. by Wimbush and Talbot, p. 42