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Whereas for much of the 19th century, women from such class backgrounds were not expected to work, or to engage in any serious education, by the 1880s and 1890s this was beginning to change.
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The position of these women had changed considerably within the space of one or two generations. The suffragette movement which erupted before the war had a big impact on a layer of educated and middle class women, who became radicalised around a range of issues. The first period was around and after the First World War when the blossoming of women’s history was quite dramatic. This has been true particularly in two periods in the 20th century when there was very swift and dramatic change in how women worked, lived and perceived themselves. The rise of specific interest in women’s history has coincided with dramatic social changes in women’s lives. This includes large numbers of women gaining access to higher education and at least some of them developing an interest in what role women have played in history. But rather we should see this development as part of a particular set of historical circumstances which have allowed women to act more freely than in any previous generation. To some right wingers, this is simply the result of ‘political correctness’ in the colleges. That has changed in the last two decades and it is now taught on specific courses in colleges and is the subject of large numbers of studies. Until relatively recently the study of women’s history was largely unknown. Lindsey German looks at the history of the women's movement, the massive changes to the lives of women and the theoretical responses to women's oppression