Prof Sheila Rowbotham

After studying history at St Hilda's  College, Oxford University, I began my career lecturing in Liberal Studies at Chelsea College of Advanced Technology. I then worked for several years as an Extra Mural Lecturer for London University. In 1981 I was appointed as a Visiting Professor in Women's Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Between 1983 and 1986 I worked as a research officer for the Greater  London Council's Industry and Employment Department, producing a newspaper, 'Jobs for a Change', and contributing to the London Industrial Strategy. This led to an invitation to become Consultant Research Adviser for the Women's Programme, World Institute for Development Economics Research, (WIDER) at the United Nations University. I initiated a project which examined the conditions of poor women's casualised work internationally, involving activists and academics. This attracted  interest among policy makers in Canada , Finland and India. I was then asked to participate on a project directed by Professor Swasti Mitter at UNU INTECH on women and technology. This attracted widespread international interest. Between 1987 and 1989 I was also Course Tutor on the Women's Studies M.A. at the University of Kent and a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris VIII. This was followed by a Visiting Professorship in the Political Economy Department at Carleton University in 1993. I first came to Manchester University in 1993-4 as  a Simon Research Fellow. I returned in 1995, initially as a Research Fellow.

I have lectured  extensively in North America, Brazil, Europe and India. My work has been translated into many languages including Chinese, Arabic and Hebrew. A symposium on my historical  work was organised at the American Historical Association in 1994 and has been  the subject of various articles, essays and theses internationally. I was given  an honorary doctorate by North London University (now London Metropolitan University) and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I am on the Working Lives Centre Group at London Metropolitan University and the Workers' Institute Advisory Panel (Black Country Living Museum) . I have also  helped groups involved with the organisation of home workers in Britain and internationally and supported the work of Women Working World Wide.

Women's history and contemporary position as workers internationally/ labour/ cultural history/ social movements.

My main area of study has been the historical and contemporary position of women, the history of feminism and women's movements along with the history of labour, socialist and anarchist groups. These grew out of my  involvement in radical and feminist politics in the 1960s and 70s. My work at the GLC and for the UN generated interest in democratising economic and social policy, women's global labour networks and especially links between home workers globally. My teaching in Sociology contributed to my interest in culture and social change. My main focus since  2001 has been on social and cultural history.

I am currently engaged in two major research projects which will be completed in 2007-2008.

One is a biography of Edward Carpenter, (1844 -1929) socialist and campaigner for homosexual rights and women's emancipation. I am examining Carpenter's life and work in relation to the many networks in which he moved. These included republicans, sex  reformers, animal rights advocates,  clean air campaigners, prison reformers and many more from the 1870s to the 1920s. He knew politicians such as Ramsay MacDonald, trade unionists like Tom Mann, writers like Bernard  Shaw and Siegfried Sassoon. His work was influential in many countries including the US, India and Japan and admired by such diverse figures as Tolstoy and Tagore. Carpenter was  an early critic of  Western values, grafting on to his socialism Romantic and Idealist traditions of thought which critiqued  the emphasis on  purely material progress and increasing productivity. However he was also very interested in contemporary science and a good mathematician and applied himself to the practicalities of alternative technology. His broad theoretical span as well as his activism make it possible  to see many  aspects of late nineteenth and early twentieth political, social  and cultural history in a new light.

The second book grew out of 'A Century of Women'. It examines how women radicals and reformers in Britain and the US contributed ideas and practical proposals to  changing everyday life from the 1890s to the 1920s.It covers personal identity, lifestyle, sex, motherhood, domestic work and paid work.

• Cinema and Society in Britain since the 1950s (2nd Year)
• Sociology of the Counter Culture ((3rd Year)
• A Century of Women (M.A.)

Publications Database

• 'Women Resistance and Revolution', Allen Lane 1972, Penguin, 1973 (US edition and translated into seven languages).
• 'Woman's Consciousness, Man's World' Pelican 1973, ( US edition and translated into six languages).
• 'Hidden from History', Pluto, 1973, (US edition and translated into six languages).
• 'Socialism and the New Life' ( with Jeff Weeks)  Pluto 1979,(translated into Spanish).
• 'Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism' (with Lynne Segal and Hilary Wainwright) Merlin, 1980 (US edition and translated in four languages)
• 'The Past is Before Us: Feminism in Action Since the 1960s', Pandora 1989, Penguin 1990.
• 'Women in Movement: Feminism and Social Action' Routledge, 1993, New York and London.
• 'A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the US', Viking 1997  Penguin 1999(London and New York).
• 'Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties', Penguin 2000, (London)Verso (New York) 2001.

Since 2001

• Eds. Sheila Rowbotham and Stephanie Linkogle, 'Women Resist Globalization: Mobilizing for Livelihood and Rights', Zed, London and New York  2001.
• Eds. Sheila Rowbotham and Huw Beynon,' Looking at Class: Film, Television and the Working Class in CBritain', Rivers Oram, London, 2002.
• 'A la recouverte d'Alice Wheeldon' in ed. Martine Spensky, 'Les femmes et la conquete du pouvoir politique: Royaume Uni, Irlande, Inde', Centre de Recherches syr le Commonwealth et led Iles britanniques de l'Universite de Paris VII,l' Harmatton, Paris ,2001.
• ' Bringing Women's Voices into the Dialogue on Technology Policy and Globalisation in Asia '( with Swasti Mitter) , International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol 2,no3, Autumn 2001.
• 'How does Private Life Affect Public Life?' in ed. Harriet Swain, Big Questions in History, Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books , London and New York, 2005. In association with THES.
• 'Cleaners' Organizing in Britain: A Personal Account' in Antipode, Blackwells Vol. 38 no 3, May ,2006. Reprinted in eds. Luis Aguiar and Andrew Herod, 'Cleaning Up the Global Economy, Blackwells, 2006.
• 'Women and Utopia', Modena Sprak: Journal of Language , Literature and Culture', Goteborgs University, Sweden, Special Centennial edition, Spring 2006. (Originally a paper given to the American Sociological Association) .
• '”Thefts of Knowledge” Women, Education and Politics' in Nivedini: Journal of Gender Studies, Women's Education and Research Centre , Clombo University, Sri Lanka, Vol. 2, no1, July/August 2006.

Forewords/Introductions

• Ed. Pamela Sharpe, ' Women, gender and Labour Migration: Historical  and Global perspectives', Routledge, London, 2001.
• Eds. Peter Gordon and David Doughan,' Dictionary of British Women's Organisations, 1825-1960 ' Woburn Press, London, 2001.
• Eds. Helene Curtis and Mimi Sanderson, 'The Unsung Sixties: Memoirs of Social Innovation' Whiting and Birch Ltd, 2004.
• Agnes Khoo, 'Life as the River Flows: Women in the Malayan Anti-Colonial Struggle,' Gerakbudaya, Selangor, Malaysia, 2004, Merlin Press 2007.

Other

• Bridget Hill. Entry for the Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2006.

Forthcoming 

• 'Ponnambalam Arunachalam and Edward Carpenter: The Ripples of a Friendship' in ed. Selvy Thirachandran,' Kumari Jayawardena Felicitation  Volume' Womedre, New Delhi, India.
• 'The Social Meaning of Arts and Crafts' in eds Pavel Buchler and Will Bradley, 'Not Colour or Form: The Artist as Activist in Western Democracy', Arts Council and Manchester Metropolitan University.

Media

I have written for ‘The Guardian’, ‘The Financial Times’, ‘The Independent’ ‘The Times’ , ‘The New Statesman’, ’Red Pepper’, ‘The Irish Times’, ‘The New York Times’ and Cumhuriyet in Turkey. I have given innumerable newspaper and magazine interviews and been a consultant  for many TV documentaries. The most recent of these has been for the BBC Drama department on key historical moments over the last 30 years for a series of plays based on these . I have appeared on many radio programmes, most recently Women’s Hour and the Archive Hour in Britain and I have also been interviewed  on US, Canadian, Australian and Spanish Radio. I  was featured on TV in ‘The Middle Classes’, a very successful series which has been repeated many times. I have also  been an adviser and contributed to exhibitions. The most recent has been writing the text for placards  commemorating the Spanish Civil War  in the North West on women and on medical aid for the Greater Manchester Trades Council. These were displayed in several local town halls and  libraries during 2006.

PhD Students

I am currently supervising four  students; their work is on the recent developments in trade unions, the Winter of Discontent in the late 1970s,  Armenian women migrant workers and women’s activism in social movements in Korea and Taiwan.