'Fighting for the Vote: Science and Suffrage in WW1' is the title of this year's HG Wells Annual Lecture, to be given by Dr Patricia Fara.
The lecture, hosted by the Centre for the History of the Sciences at the School of History, will take place in Keynes Lecture Theatre 5, Canterbury campus, on Wednesday 4 March at 5.15pm.
Inspired by utopian dreams, HG Wells imagined a future characterised by science, equality and justice – and in 1919, the suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett declared triumphantly, ‘The war revolutionised the industrial position of women. It found them serfs, and left them free.’
Their optimism was premature. World War One did benefit British women by enabling them to take on traditionally male roles in science, engineering and medicine. But even though women over 30 gained the right to vote, conventional hierarchies were rapidly re-established after the Armistice.
The lecture will concentrate mainly on a small group of well-qualified scientific and medical women, marginalised at the time and also in the secondary literature. Dr Patricia Fara of Clare College at Cambridge will review the attitudes they experienced and the work they undertook during and immediately after the War.
The lecture is free and open to all. For more information, contact Dr Charlotte Sleigh.