The Spaces of Working Class Women's Political Activism, 1966- 1992

This PhD will make a significant contribution to the sub-field of labour geographies as well as enhance current historical debates surrounding working-class women's engagement with feminism. The late 1960's to mid-1980's was a time marked by intense workplace militancy and industrial struggle (Kelliher 2018). This timeframe also coincided with the emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain (Littler,2021). Previous scholarly attempts to historicise both the industrial disputes of working-class women and the political struggles of the Women's Liberation Movement have positioned these two developments as separate and unconnected, unfolding in different spaces. The effect of this separation has been two-fold. It has not only silenced the voices of working-class women from feminist struggle (Moss 2019), but it has meant working-class women's industrial disputes remain overwhelmingly underexplored in the field of historical labour geography (Girod, 2020). This project will redress this situation by exploring the spaces through which working-class women in industrial collective action were formulating feminist ideas.