Women's Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years shines new light on 33 legal landmarks, many forgotten today, that affected women in England and Wales between 1918 and 1939. It considers the work of feminist activists to bring about legal change which benefited - or aimed to benefit - women. Areas explored include property, inheritance, adoption, marriage, access to health care, criminal law, employment opportunities, pay, pensions and political representation. It also examines campaigns by key women's organisations, and assesses the impact of early women lawyers and politicians. While some of the landmarks effected change during this period, others provided the foundation for measures in later decades. Together the landmarks demonstrate that far from being a relatively quiet period of British feminism, the interwar period played a key role in ongoing fights for recognition, representation and justice.

"This book focuses on the often forgotten legal landmark' that benefited, or aimed to benefit, women in England and Wales between 1918 and 1938. The book follows campaigns by key women's organisations, including the Six-Point Group and the Married Women's Association, while assessing the impact of early women lawyers and politicians. Bringing together 30 academics and scholars, the book uncovers an era marked by feminist activists to provoke legal reforms and advances impacting every area of life - including property, family relationships, access to health care, criminal law, employment opportunities, pay, pensions and political representation"--

This insightful Research Handbook provides a global perspective on key legal debates surrounding marriage and cohabitation. Bringing together an impressive array of established and emerging scholars, it adopts a comparative approach to analyse cross-jurisdictional trends and divergences in relationship recognition and family formation.

The book explores the rise of civil divorce in Victorian England, the subsequent operation of a fault system of divorce based solely on the ground of adultery, and the eventual piecemeal repeal of the Victorian-era divorce law during the Interwar years. The legal history of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 is at the heart of the book. The Act had a transformative impact on English law and society by introducing a secular judicial system of civil divorce. This swept aside the old system of divorce that was only obtainable from the House of Lords and inadvertently led to the creation of the modern family justice system. The book argues that only through understanding the legal doctrine in its wider cultural, political, religious, and social context is it possible to fully analyse and assess the changes brought about by the Act. The major developments included the end of any pretence of the indissolubility of marriage, the statutory enshrinement of a double standard based on gender in the grounds for divorce, and the growth of divorce across all spectrums of English society. The Act was a product of political and legal compromise between conservative forces resisting the legal introduction of civil divorce and the reformers, who demanded married women receive equal access to the grounds of divorce. Changing attitudes towards divorce that began in the Edwardian period led to a gradual rejection of Victorian moral values and the repeal of the Act after 80 years of existence in the Interwar years. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers with an interest in legal history, family law, and Victorian studies.

This collection of essays honours Rosemary Auchmuty, Professor of Law at the University of Reading, UK. She has fostered the study of women's academic careers and, more politically, advanced progress on gender and equality issues including same-sex marriage and property law. Her research promotes the case of feminist legal history as a way of revealing the place of women and challenging dominant historical narratives that cast them aside. Just as Rosemary's work does, the book seeks to end the marginalisation and exclusion of women in the legal world, by including them. The book begins fittingly with a discussion of Miss Bebb, the woman whose biography Auchmuty deployed to push feminist legal history into the mainstream. It turns then to a discussion of women known and unknown and their struggles within the legal profession offering within those chapters a critical appraisal of the role of history and biography as a methodology. From there it moves to consider feminist perspectives and critiques of the dominant structures of private law. This is followed by chapters that explore those who educate the legal profession within the academy. The chapters, and the collection as a whole, examine areas of law that have a deep significance for women's lives.

This book integrates women’s history and legal studies within the broader context of modern European history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sixteen contributions from fourteen countries explore the ways in which the law contributes to the social construction of gender. They analyze questions of family law and international law and highlight the politics of gender in the legal professions in a variety of historical, social and national settings, including Eastern, Southern, Western, Northern and Central Europe. Focusing on different legal cultures, they show us the similarities and differences in the ways the law has shaped the contours of women and men’s lives in powerful ways. They also show how women have used legal knowledge to struggle for their equal rights on the national and transnational level. The chapters address the interconnectedness of the history of feminism, legislative reforms, and women’s citizenship, and build a foundation for a comparative vision of women’s legal history in modern Europe.

Through interdisciplinary research, this book explores the continued cause of the significant gender pay gap that still exists in many countries today. This gap persists despite a wide range of measures having been introduced to protect women at work. Internationally varied approaches which have been attempted include prohibiting discrimination, maternity leave, maternity pay, health and safety protections for pregnant workers, tax breaks, childcare vouchers, shared parental leave, and gender pay gap reporting. This volume makes a significant and original contribution by tackling the topic through fresh historical and activist approaches, specific consideration of certain professions, and topical issues, such as the gig economy, treatment of carers post-coronavirus, and developing approaches to prosecuting pay equity claims. Our comparative approach interrogates how countries studied in this volume have had varying approaches and differing success in tackling this pervasive issue of the gender pay gap. Lessons to learn regarding policy reform are included in chapters from authors based not only in the UK but also in the United States, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland and fully developed in the conclusion.