by howl | Mar 3, 2026 | 1970s, 1980s, campaigns, Publishing
By Helen Martins Getting a Reader Pass at the British Library had been on my bucket list for a long time. When I finally got round to organising this a few years ago, the person at the registration desk asked me what I wanted to study. My reply was “the history of the...
by howl | Feb 27, 2026 | 1970s, Groups, Publishing, Women at work
By Barbara Ridley I cycled the three miles home from the hospital after my eight-hour evening shift and manoeuvred my bike into its slot in the hallway, before walking through the living room to get myself a cup of tea from the kitchen. I would have been wearing my...
by howl | Jan 14, 2026 | Publishing, Relationships, sex, family
By Sue O’Sullivan In 2016 I was fed up with reports in the press about a revolutionary new discovery about the clitoris. I wrote the following newly edited article for the Older Feminist Newsletter.* I recently read some stories in the media heralding breakthrough...
by howl | Jan 14, 2026 | First memories of getting involved, Groups, Relationships, sex, family
By Sue O’Sullivan I was born in 1941 in the USA. I bled at age nine and my mom that morning, lying in bed beside my dad, said when I announced this, ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. You’re so young.’ I stuffed toilet paper in my pants and told no one for more than a year after...
by howl | Dec 16, 2025 | campaigns, Culture, First memories of getting involved, Relationships, sex, family
A powerful filmed lecture on Irish women’s activism in Britain, delivered by long-standing feminist, activist and author Ann Rossiter, and filmed by renowned director Sé Merry Doyle at the Irish Cultural Centre in May 2024. In “These Wildish Things,” Rossiter reflects...
by howl | Jul 21, 2025 | campaigns, Groups, Stories, Women at work
By Marianne Scruggs and Judy Pruss Rogers When a retired midwife friend told me about HOWL and suggested I write something about the beginning of the Association of Radical Midwives, I realized that next year, 2026, it will be 50 years since ARM began. Fortunately, I...
by howl | Jul 11, 2025 | 1970, 1970s, 1972, 1972, campaigns, Groups
By Helen Donoghue and Janet Brewer Free contraception and abortion on demand was one of the first four demands of the women’s liberation movement; these were established at the Ruskin conference of 1970. It was recognition that until women could control their own...
by howl | Jun 23, 2025 | 1973, Culture, Groups
By Nic Humberstone In 1973 my girlfriend and I were off to Warwick University on grants, where we would spend the next three years. Me aged 25 and considered a ‘mature’ student. Having left school at 15 (thrown out) and considered a failure, this was a triumph. The...
by howl | Mar 20, 2025 | 1970s, Culture, Groups, Publishing
By Janet Brewer Those of us who were around in the Seventies will remember the books which meant the most to us back then. For me it started with The Feminine Mystique, The Captive Wife and The Female Eunuch. Thank you, Betty Friedan, Hannah Gavron and Germaine Greer...
by howl | Feb 13, 2025 | 1970s, Culture, Groups
By Frankie Green The changed life into which most of us entered was a revolution in itself. No home life, no-one to say what we should or should not do, no family ties, we were free and alone in a great, brilliant city, scores of women scarcely out of their teens met...
