Rethinking right-wing women : gender and the Conservative Party, 1880s to the present / edited by Clarisse Berthezène and Julie V. Gottlieb.

Includes bibliographies and index.

'Open the eyes of England': female unionism and conservatism, 1886-1914 / Diane Urquhart -- Christabel Pankhurst: a convervative suffragette? / June Purvis -- At the heart of the party? The women's conservative organisation in the age of partial suffrage, 1914-28 / David Thackeray -- Conservative women and the Primrose League's struggle for survival, 1914-32 / Matthew C. Hendley -- Modes and models of conservative women's leadership in the 1930s / Julie V. Gottlieb -- The middlebrow and the making of a 'new common sense': women's voluntarism, conservative politics and representations of womanhood / Clarisse Berthezène -- Churchill, women, and the politics of gender / Richard Toye -- 'The statutory woman whose main task was to explore what women ... were likely to think': Margaret Thatcher and women's politics in the 1950s and 1960s / Krista Cowman -- Conservatism, gender and the politics of everyday life, 1950s-1980s / Adrian Bingham -- Feminist responses to Thatcher and Thatcherism / Laura Beers -- The (feminised) contemporary Conservative Party / Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs -- Conserving conservative women: a view from the archives / Jeremy McIlwaine -- Women2Win and the feminisation of the UK Conservative Party / Baroness Anne Jenkin, introduction by Sarah Childs.

Rethinking Right-Wing Women explores the institutional structures for and the representations, mobilisation, and the political careers of women in the British Conservative Party since the late 19th century. From the Primrose League (est. 1883) to Women2Win (est. 2005), the party has exploited women's political commitment and their social power from the grass-roots to the heights of the establishment. Yet, although it is the party that extended the equal franchise, had the first woman MP to sit Parliament, and produced the first two women Prime Ministers, the UK Conservative Party has developed political roles for women that jar with feminist and progressive agendas. Conservative women have tended to be more concerned about the fulfilment of women's duties than the realisation of women's rights. This book tackles the ambivalences between women's politicisation and women's emancipation in the history of Britain's most electorally successful and hegemonic political party.

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