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Where are all the women?

Category
History
Date

As this project has uncovered, there were many women involved in the revolution at all levels: from the leadership, to writing radical pamphlets, to acting as messengers and gunrunners. Why have they been ignored by the current historical narrative?

Women had been excluded from the political arena. They were only able to participate in political activities from 1908 and the franchise was extended to them in 1918, after the revolution had already begun. Women were involved in industries and were elected to Workers' Councils after the revolution but, as more soldiers returned from war, many women were pushed out of the workforce and therefore lost their seats on councils. This means that many public documents exclude women. However, this does not mean that women were not involved in politics or political action. It certainly does not mean that they were not revolutionaries.

If historians only focus on the sailors' mutiny in Kiel, without examining the role of the townspeople and their protests, or only look at Workers' Councils, women will be continued to be left out of the historical narrative.

This project has found so many women, involved in so many different ways that to continue to ignore their contributions is to fundamentally misrepresent the revolution. We are currently developing the Painter Sharp Database (which will be made available through the Leeds Data Repository). There is much work still to be done.