Women’s Professional Employment in Wales 1880-1939 School of History, Archaeology and Religion Cardiff University Beth Jenkins 2016 A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract This thesis examines women’s professional employment in Wales between 1880 and 1939. It explores women’s negotiation of professional identities, their formation of professional networks, and their relationship with the broader women’s movement over this formative period in the emergence of the professions. The thesis contributes to neglected histories of women and the middle class in Wales, and enhances our understanding of the strategies women used to enter professional society. As the first major study of women’s professional employment in Wales, the thesis suggests that the Welsh women’s experience did exhibit some distinctive features. Women’s education attained a political and cultural importance in Wales from the late nineteenth century. But the nation’s economic development offered limited opportunities for educated women’s paid employment. This exacerbated the high proportion of women in the teaching profession, and meant that women’s professional employment was confined to a smaller range of occupations in Wales by the outbreak of the Second World War. Unlike most related studies of women’s work which focus on individual occupations, this thesis provides a comparative approach of women’s employment in medicine, teaching and academia. Such an approach reveals the interconnections and networks between groups of professional women and allows for analysis of an overarching feminine version of professional identity. In doing so, the thesis argues that women participated in professional society by exploiting – rather than directly challenging – contemporary gender norms and existing professional practices. By exploiting contemporary gender norms, women developed a distinctive feminine professional identity which highlighted their ‘natural’ skills and, following professional practices, they increasingly institutionalised their networks into women’s professional organisations and capitalised upon professional ideals of meritocracy. Table of Contents List of figures page ii Acknowledgements iii Abbreviations iv Map of historic counties of Wales vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Concepts and Contexts 20 Chapter 2: Negotiating Femininity 38 Chapter 3: Strategies of Separatism 82 Chapter 4: Suffrage, Citizenship and Workplace Equality 119 Chapter 5: Place, Politics and Class 152 Conclusion 191 Biographies 197 Appendices 205 Bibliography 215 i List of figures 1. Photograph of the Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society Page on 13 June 1908. 126 2. Map of female medical practitioners in Wales and Monmouth, 154 1912. 3. Map of female medical practitioners in Wales and Monmouth, 155 1924. 4. J. M. Staniforth Cartoon depicting the campaign for a woman 159 doctor at Cardiff Gaol from the Evening Express, 13 February 1896. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Dr Stephanie Ward and Dr Tracey Loughran for their expert help, guidance and encouragement throughout my studies. Special thanks also to Professor Bill Jones, without whom this project would not have started. I am extremely grateful to Ceridwen Richards, Eluned Evans and Margaret Griffiths for sharing their time and memories with me. Many thanks also to Neil Evans and Professor Angela V. John for kindly sending me references and copies of material. Thanks to all the archivists and librarians for their assistance in locating and accessing the materials that form the basis of this study. In particular, many thanks to Alison Harvey at Cardiff University and Julie Archer at Aberystwyth University for arranging for me to view boxes of uncatalogued material from the institutional archives. I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this thesis. I would also like to thank the generosity of the Glamorgan History Society, the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University and the Bill John Travel Scholarship Fund for funding my research trips and conferences. Many thanks also to Professor June Purvis and Professor Christopher Williams for examining this thesis. Finally, thank you to my parents, Tom, and Anthony for their unwavering support. iii Abbreviations AAM Association of Assistant Mistresses APEGW Association for Promoting the Education of Girls in Wales AUIA Aberystwyth University Institutional Archive AWST Association of Women Science Teachers BFUW British Federation of University Women BL British Library BMA British Medical Association BMJ British Medical Journal BUA Bangor University Archives CCL Cardiff Central Library CDWCA Cardiff and District Women Citizens’ Association CDWSS Cardiff and District Women’s Suffrage Society CMS Cardiff Medical School CRO Caernarfon Record Office CUIA Cardiff University Institutional Archive GA Glamorgan Archives ILP Independent Labour Party IOE Institute of Education IWM Imperial War Museum LEA Local Education Authority LSMW London School of Medicine for Women MOH Medical Officer of Health MRO Meirionnydd Record Office MWF Medical Women’s Federation NAS National Association of Schoolmasters NAWCS National Association of Women Civil Servants NFWT National Federation of Women Teachers NLW National Library of Wales NUSEC National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship NUT National Union of Teachers NUWSS National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies NUWT National Union of Women Teachers NWNA North Wales Nursing Association RBA Richard Burton Archives SCOLAR Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University SWDN South Wales Daily News SWH Scottish Women’s Hospitals SWML South Wales Miners’ Library SDRA Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act TNA The National Archives UCNW University College of North Wales UCSWM University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire VAD Voluntary Aid Detachment WA Wellcome Archives WGA West Glamorgan Archives iv WL The Women’s Library WNSM Welsh National School of Medicine WUWLA Welsh Union of Women’s Liberal Associations WCA Women Citizens’ Association WFL Women’s Freedom League WLA Women’s Liberal Association WSPU Women’s Social and Political Union v Map of the Historic Counties of Wales vi Introduction This thesis examines women’s professional employment in Wales between 1880 and 1939. During this period, each generation of professional women faced tensions between gender prescriptions and their paid employment. The main chapters in this study explore how women responded to those tensions in their negotiation of professional identities, their formation of professional networks, and their relationship with the broader women’s movement over this formative period in the emergence of the professions. Through an exploration of the strategies women used to enter professional society in Wales, the thesis contributes to our understanding of the gendered nature of the professions, and histories of women and the middle class in Wales in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The introduction outlines the arguments, historiographical contribution and structure of the thesis; it discusses the survival and interpretation of the sources used; and, finally, provides a brief historical overview of women’s paid employment in Wales. (i) Arguments, Aims and Contribution Unlike most studies of women’s professional employment which focus on individual occupations, this thesis examines the professions collectively.1 As Burrage and Torstendahl note, ‘the inclination of historians is to study a particular profession, over a specified time period…few have also considered them collectively as a distinct social formation and tried to assess their significance for British society’.2 Whilst accommodating occupational differences, a collective approach reveals the interconnections and networks between groups of professional women and the extent to which there was an overarching feminine version of professional identity. Viewing women’s professional employment holistically also enables questions to be asked about 1 Helen Glew, Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900-55 (Manchester, 2016); Catriona Blake, The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry to the Medical Profession (London, 1990); Louise A. Jackson, Women Police: Gender, Welfare and Surveillance in the Twentieth Century (Manchester, 2006); Alison Oram, Women Teachers and Feminist Politics (Manchester, 1996); Laura Kelly, Irish Women in Medicine, c.1880s-1920s: Origins, Education and Careers (Manchester, 2012). 2 Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (eds), Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions (New York, 1985), p.18. 1 why some occupations allowed greater scope for women’s employment than others and highlights the uneven historical trajectory of women’s paid, professional work. This thesis argues that women participated in professional society by exploiting – rather than directly challenging – both contemporary gender norms and existing practices of professionalisation. By exploiting contemporary gender norms, women developed a distinctive feminine professional identity which highlighted their ‘natural’ skills and, following professional practices, they increasingly institutionalised their networks into women’s professional organisations and capitalised upon professional ideals of meritocracy. The definition of what constitutes a ‘profession’, as chapter one will show, has been contested