Diabolical Conspiracy or Mad Hatter’s Tea Party?

‘“N
o room! No room!” they cried out when they saw Alice coming.’ In her introduction to There’s Always Been A Women's Movement this Century, Dale Spender admits that the elan of involvement in the recent women’s movement made her overlook ‘the unlit corridor of women's history’. She deplores ‘the process of reducing women to invisibility’. In a patriarchy, ‘sexism’ is ‘something that all members do ... There weren’t many patriarchal traps that I did not fall into’. Wanting to ‘generate a tradition of strong authoritative women’, she interviewed five ‘elder stateswomen’, all born between 1890 and 1910: journalist and leader of the six Point Group for equality Hazel Hunkins Hallinan; journalist and novelist Rebecca West; pacifist, educationalist and writer Dora Russell; journalist and Fawcett Society stalwart Mary Stott; sociologist Constance Rover. The result was ‘a genuine educational experience’ that prompts some flushed prior publicity: ‘it would be a (patriarchal) mistake to think of these discussions as insignificant but pleasant gossip about old times. This is a form of women’s history ... each women tells her own story ... despite all the many limitations, we have here a valuable record’.