Women at War: Dr Patricia Fara (1918)
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A Lab of One’s Own
The early twenty-first century has seen a blossoming of historical work on the women’s suffrage movement of a century ago.
Figures like Emmeline Pankhurst, Kitty Marion and Emily Wilding Davison have been celebrated for their willingness to take on the establishment in the hard-fought quest for equality.
While these suffragettes demand and deserve attention, another specific group of pioneering women have remained in marginal obscurity. These are a number of highly-educated and capable women who decided not to join the militant movements.
Instead they distinguished themselves by working in professions that had hitherto been dominated by men. They were aircraft designers, surgeons, chemical researchers, military commanders and surveillance operatives. Their work contributed significantly to the British war effort.
This little-studied but revolutionary group of women are at the heart of Dr Patricia Fara’s latest book, A Lab of One’s Own. Patricia is a Fellow of Clare College Cambridge, a prize-winning author and has recently served as President for the British Society for the History of Science.
In this episode of Travels Through Time, Patricia takes us back to 1918 so we can watch three of these women working with great skill, energy and success, against the backdrop of one of the most brutal wars in world history.
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Click here to order Patricia Fara’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
Listen to the podcast here
Show notes:
Scene One: 10th Jan 1918, House of Lords. The suffragist Ray Strachey watches them approve the 1918 Representation of the People Act
Scene Two: 26 March. Marie Stopes’s Married Love is published and she meets her future husband after he returns from the War with a broken ankle
Scene Three: 1 November, Vranje, Serbia. Dr Isabel Emslie takes over a military hospital. She stays there long after the Armistice
Memento: Dr Isabel Emslie’s Diary
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Dr Patricia Fara
Editorial: Artemis Irvine
Producers: Maria Nolan & John Hillman
Titles: Jon O.
Listen on YouTube
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