Hidden from History
300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against it

In this study of women from the Puritan revolution to the 1930s, the author shows how class and sex, work and family, personal life and social pressures have shaped and hindered women's struggles for equality.

In this classic study of women in Britain from the Puritan revolution of the mid-seventeenth century to the 1930s, Sheila Rowbotham shows how class and sex, work and the family, personal life and social pressures have shaped and hindered women's struggles for equality. She explores the different effects that changes in the process of production have on middle-class and working-class women; why birth control and the organisation of working women have been perceived as threatening to traditional male control of the family; how paid work and work in the home are intricately related and determine the social valuation of women -- and why these and many other issues have continued to arise in different form throughout modern history.