Gender and the "Great Divide": Public and Private in British Gender History

British women's history of the 1970s and 1980s was spearheaded by feminists with a deep commitment to the women's movement. We confronted a traditional and male-dominated historical profession whose view of history centered on high politics and diplomacy. By contrast, for many, our approach had been through labor history, particularly in the History Workshop movement, and focused on working-class, everyday lives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Small wonder that women's oppression and exploitation figured large and that the exclusion of women from the work force and formal politics was especially significant. In particular, we recognized the power of marriage, family, and motherhood in determining women's past lives. Following nineteenth-century nomenclature,women's "separate sphere" became a dominant theme, particularly in relation to the nineteenth-century English middle class. 2