Image: Young woman writing a letter by Federico Zandomeneghi (1874)
Sources used in writing about specific women are listed at the end of each post. Here I’ve listed: websites, blogs and projects that could be useful for anyone interested in business women from the mid-Victorian period through to the Second World War; and resources focused on increasing gender parity in the workplace today. For books with a wider focus on women at work, see the Reading List.
The history of women at work
Blogs / specialist sites – UK focused
Sisters of the lens – celebrating women photographers from the 1850s to the 1950s
Lost in the Archives – Ann Kennedy Smith brings hidden stories of women from the Victorian era and twentieth century out of the archives and into the light
Woman and her Sphere – a wealth of suffrage stories as well as insights into the world of work
Women Engineers History – histories of women working in engineering and construction
The First 100 Years – the past and future of women in the legal profession
Trowelblazers – highlighting the contributions of women in the ‘digging’ sciences – archaeology, geology and palaeontology
City Women, founded by Dr Carrie da Silva, celebrates a wide range of women’s firsts in the world of work
City Women in the 18th century was a project by Dr Amy Erickson exploring the stories of women’s work in the City of London through their business cards.
Pascal Theatre Company has a two-year project, Women for Women, researching the stories of Bloomsbury women in the 19th century with over 300 profiles of women and the societies and institutions in which they were involved.
The City of Women London map re-imagines the London Underground map and replaces the names of the 272 stations with those of women and non-binary people who have made their mark on London. Among them are several women featured in this project: Hilda Hewlett; Mary Harris Smith; Amy Ashwood Garvey; Christina Broom, Gertrude Leverkus and Emma Paterson, in the context of the Women’s Printing Society.
Blogs / specialist sites: global with a UK component:
Women Film Pioneers Project – a global project documenting the contribution of women to early cinema, which can be searched by geography and name. Includes entries on Lotte Reiniger and Lucy Duff Gordon.
Research bodies and archives
The Women’s Library – London School of Economics. The key archive for women’s history during this period. Has a huge range of books, physical archive material and digitised copies of annual reports, pamphlets and newspapers published by women’s organisations.
The Bedford Centre for the History of Women and Gender – Royal Holloway, University of London
History of Advertising Trust – holds the archives of WACL, the Women’s Advertising Club of London
Walgreen Boots Alliance Heritage – Boots was an early employer of women and has a wealth of archive material
John Lewis Partnership Heritage Centre – the John Lewis Partnership was another early proponent of women in the workplace and has a rich archive
Digitised journals
One of the best resources for finding out about women at work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is the British Newspaper Archive. The digitisation of newspapers like The Queen, The Gentlewoman, The Vote and Common Cause makes what women were doing far more visible and accessible.
The Modernist Journals project has a range of free-to-access digitised periodicals from 1892-1922 including The Freewoman, a feminist journal edited by Dora Ramsden and Mary Gawthorpe, to which Rebecca West contributed.
The Englishwoman was a pro-suffrage monthly journal published between 1909 and 1921. Contributors included Helena Normanton and Hélène Reynard. If you have a British Library pass, which is free but requires registration, you can access digitised copies of the magazine remotely.
The Women Engineer, the journal of the Women’s Engineering Society, published since 1919, is also available in a digitised and searchable form. The WES worked with many other women’s groups and so gives insight into the work of women in a wide range of sectors.
If you want to go right back to the start, you can read The English Women’s Journal, the original feminist magazine, founded by Barbara Bodichon, Bessie Rayner Parkes and Isa Craig and published between 1858 and 1864. The proceedings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences are also all digitised and available via HathiTrust. Here you can read speeches by Barbara Bodichon, Octavia Hill and Rhoda Garrett. You can also find records of events like the International Women’s Congress held in London in 1899.
The world of work today
Blogs / specialist sites
Catalyst – Workplaces that Work for Women
Women in Banking and Finance – an industry-wide membership network
The Fawcett Society – campaigning for, among other things, pay equality for women
Birds Eye View – supporting film-making by women and non-binary people
Free the Bid – giving a voice to women film-makers in TV, advertising and film
The Inclusion Initiative – an LSE-driven research programme focused on creating more inclusive working environments
Women Who Meant Business 