Feminism and the Servant Problem

In the early twentieth century, women fought for the right to professional employment and political influence outside the home. Yet if liberation from household 'drudgery' meant employing another woman to do it, where did this leave domestic servants? Both inspired and frustrated by the growing feminist movement, servants began forming their own trade unions, demanding better conditions and rights at work. Feminism and the Servant Problem is the first ever history of how these militant maids and their mistresses joined forces in the struggle for the vote but also clashed over competing class interests. Laura Schwartz uncovers a forgotten history of domestic worker organising and early feminist thinking on reproductive labour, and offers a new perspective on the class politics of the suffrage movement, challenging traditional notions of who made up the British working-class.

'Exploitation is not about whether employers are nice or nasty, says Laura Schwartz. In this book it's about the labour relationship between women - feminist, suffragist and other - and their servants. A scintillating contribution to the new labour history of Britain in which voices from the women workers historians have most neglected, speak loud and clear.' Carolyn Steedman, University of Warwick, 'A wonderful, lucid account of the relationship between domestic service and women's suffrage in early twentieth-century Britain. Schwartz highlights the contradictions within the movement, and sensitively draws attention to long lasting structural inequalities. Using richly woven archival material, Schwartz offers a brilliant intervention and model on how one can write a feminist history of class-based struggle that highlights the voices and perspectives of domestic workers. A must-read.' Sumita Mukherjee, University of Bristol, 'Laura Schwartz has given us a rich account of the social and everyday history of paid for domestic labour in early twentieth century Britain. Feminism and the Servant Problem is an exciting new breed of history that spans the social, cultural, intellectual, emotional, and political. Written with panache, this history offers a fascinating new angle on suffrage feminism.' Lucy Delap, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, 'This is not simply another history of the suffrage campaign, though it does much to enrich our understanding of everyday politics in the women's movement, and particularly cross-class relationships within it. Rather, it is an exceptionally lucid contribution to histories of work and feminism which is unusually effective at bringing emotional texture to intellectual debates and using individual critiques to illuminate structural inequalities. Energetic and exceptionally clear and accessible prose will make it invaluable to students as well as more advanced scholars. It is an outstanding achievement.' Lyndsey Jenkins, Women's History Review, '… [a] meticulous, fascinating study …' Zoe Fairbairns, Book Oxygen (www.bookoxygen.com)

Laura Schwartz is Associate Professor of Modern British History at the University of Warwick. She has published widely on the history of British feminism, and is the author of A Serious Endeavour: Gender Education and Community at St Hugh's, 1886–2011 (2011) and Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women's Emancipation, England 1830–1914 (2013).