Women, work and value in Europe, 1945-2015

This research network explores the ways in which women's work has been valued in Europe since 1945. It brings together academics, members of the public, interest groups and policy makers to discuss the relevance of past experiences of work for the challenges facing today's society. Through a series of four workshops, participants from across Europe and the US will examine the history of women's work, both paid and unpaid, and the ways in which it has been represented and valued.

The outcomes of the network will include an international network of researchers, an online resource, two public events, a theme issue of an interdisciplinary journal, and pathways to future research collaborations.

On the one hand, in the past two decades, historians of Europe have focused more on consumption and leisure than labour and employment. There is also a dearth of work on the history of women in postwar Europe, despite the dramatic changes in female employment during this period. For social scientists, on the other hand, women and work have remained central concerns. This network will promote interdisciplinary dialogue, combining the conceptual frameworks of the social sciences with historical contexualisation, as well as the interpretative insights of cultural studies.

The first workshop (to be held in Bristol) takes these varying disciplinary perspectives as its starting point. Position papers from scholars in cultural studies, history, sociology, geography, and philosophy will lay out the parameters of the study of work and value in each field. The second workshop (Florence) turns to subjective valuations of work, and the ways in which they affect economic outcomes. The third workshop (Budapest) examines the interactions of politics and women's work, from feminist critiques of work, through trade union activism, to legislation for equal pay. The final workshop (Glasgow) will bring together contributors to the themed journal issue for a focused discussion of their papers.

Engagement is a core part of the network. The public events in Glasgow and Bristol will speak to interested members of the public, as well as activists and interest groups, drawing on our established connections with the Bristol Festival of Ideas and the Glasgow Women's Library. An undergraduate intern will be responsible for communicating the outcomes of each workshop, and will be encouraged to use new media, video, and other innovative forms of documentation. The Bristol event will be recorded for podcasting on our website. In this way, we plan to engage an audience much larger than those who can be present at the events.

The contemporary relevance of this topic presents an exciting opportunity for dialogue with interest groups and policy makers. The Glasgow public event will include representatives from the TUC, Close The Gap, and the Fawcett Society. We will also use existing networks to develop a History and Policy briefing paper to disseminate the main findings of the network.

1. The outputs of this project will be made available to the general public (local, national, and international) in two ways.

Firstly, through free public events, which will be held to coincide with the first and final workshops of the series. The first event, to be held in Bristol, will be a panel discussion on 'Work, Women, and Activism', bringing together a number of pioneering activists from the 1970s: Miriam Glucksmann (sociologist and author of Women On The Line), Selma James (Wages for Housework Campaign) and Sally Groves (trade union activist and organizer of an equal pay strike). This event will form part of the Past Matters festival of history, and the Bristol Festival of Ideas. It will also be made available as a podcast. The second event, in Glasgow, will focus on the gendered nature of care work in the UK. Exchange with practitioners will be central to this event, which will build on Glasgow University's established links with interest groups such as Close The Gap, and the TUC, as well as involving the Fawcett Society, journalists, and representatives of business organizations. Ultimately, the aim is to establish avenues for an effective intervention in public debate, one that allows scholars and civil society actors to change the way we think and talk about women's work.

Secondly, the findings of our workshops will be disseminated via our website and social media. For each of the workshops, a student intern will be tasked with communicating the academic and public discussions in a lively and accessible way. We will use existing contacts at BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 to seek national broadcast media coverage for our workshops.

2. Policy makers and voluntary sector organisations concerned with issues of work.
The findings of our network are likely to have implications for policy relating to women's work, and indeed work more generally. We will explore the possibility of disseminating our findings in a suitable format e.g. a History and Policy working paper. We will also work with the Fawcett Society, one of the key UK organisations concerned with women and work. Dr. Helen Mott, the co-ordinator of the Bristol Fawcett Society, will chair the Bristol public event.

3. The Bristol Festival of Ideas
Building on the University of Bristol's existing relationship with the Festival (an Arts Council England national portfolio organisation), the panel discussion on 'Women, Work and Activism' will form a part of the Festival's programme of events for Spring 2014.

4. Feminist history groups and archives
Trustees of the Feminist Archive South spoke at our January 2012 scoping workshop, and the Glasgow Women's Library will co-host a public engagement event in 2015, to coincide with the final workshop. Our workshops and public events, as well as our website, will highlight their collections to new audiences and users. Members of the Tobacco Women community history project (Bristol), who are working on an exhibition on the women of the Wills Tobacco Factory in South Bristol, will present their project at workshop 1. They will benefit from academic feedback, and the opportunity to build their networks.

5. Undergraduate and Masters students at Bristol and Glasgow Universities:
Students on these degrees will have the opportunity to apply for four paid public engagement internships. Interns will be asked to attend the workshop, and design an innovative and accessible way of communicating its key findings (e.g. video, interview, podcast, online resource, schools workshop etc.). Questions of audience and evaluation will be a central part of their projects. This will dovetail with students' work on units such as 'Themes in Public History' and 'The Public Role of the Humanities'. As well as allowing students to develop key communication and engagement skills, these internships offer students the opportunity take part in dialogue with the public and with professional stakeholders.