by howl | Jan 28, 2026 | 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, First memories of getting involved, Publishing, Women at work
By Pat Caplan I read Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique when I was in Nepal in 1969. On return to UK in early 1970 it was clear that it spoke to me and my situation. Pregnant with my first child, highly educated but unemployed and seemingly unemployable (‘How...
by howl | Nov 17, 2025 | 1960s, campaigns, Conference, First memories of getting involved, Women at work
By Diane Langford Whenever I can’t sleep, I listen to the BBC World Service. Early one morning in February, 2010, wearing headphones so as not to disturb my slumbering partner, I was startled awake by my own voice shouting in my ear, speaking at the first National...
by howl | Aug 26, 2025 | 1960s, Culture, First memories of getting involved, Groups, Relationships, sex, family
By Caroline Bobby When I was thirteen I ran away from home. That is almost fifty-four years ago. I came from privilege. Not high-end wealth, but certainly white middle class privilege. First off I got expelled from a ridiculous girls boarding school. I had gone in...
by howl | Jun 3, 2025 | 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980s, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, Culture, Publishing
by Amanda Sebestyen One of the amazing things about nearing 80 is that suddenly younger people want to know what you did in the past. We’ve become history! Not just to be written about by other people, but to tell it how we experienced it. Last year Tate Britain...
by howl | Mar 17, 2025 | 1960s, Culture, First memories of getting involved
By Di Parkin I had a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex when I was in sixth form in 1963. The headteacher confiscated it because it had a naked woman on the cover; however not before I had read about the concept of woman as “other”. I felt rather Other when I...
by howl-team | Dec 12, 2024 | 1960s, 1973, campaigns, First memories of getting involved, Groups, Publishing, Women at work
By Miriam E. David I spent the year 1972-3 in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the Harvard Graduate School for Education as a researcher. I had been in London for the previous six years (1966-1972), apart from three months in Israel from June to September 1967. In London,...
by howl-team | Dec 10, 2024 | 1960s, 1970s, Culture, First memories of getting involved, Laws, Relationships, sex, family
By Sona Osman In this piece of writing I would like to explain the circumstances and life experiences which led me to a feminist way of thinking which has driven most of my life and has propelled me into a life rich of adventures and experiences. Sue O’Sullivan has...
by howl-team | Dec 18, 2023 | 1960s, First memories of getting involved, Groups
Zoe Fairbairns The year was 1969, the country was the USA. I was an exchange student at a college in Virginia, taking a year out from my degree course at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Glancing one day through the Washington Post, I came upon a report of an...
by howl-team | Sep 28, 2023 | 1960s, Stories
by Ann Rossiter I remember my back-street abortion well. How could I forget? I’ve told my story many times, but while the response in Britain has been sympathetic, in Ireland and amongst the Irish in Britain it has, until recently, often elicited no more than an...
