ABSTRACT
Sidney Webb, primary architect of Fabianism, served on the Executive Committee for fifty years. He wrote 37 of the 175 tracts published before the First World War, and edited or supplied the information and initiative for a great many more of the Fabian publications and projects. In a lecture to the Fabian in 1891, Sidney attributed women’s general difficulties to the fact that they were unskilled labor, unprotected by combination, in a redundant market. If they were paid less, it was usually for different kinds of work from that of their male counterparts. In charting Beatrice’s changing positions on the “woman question” one can only say that she became a cautious and rather reluctant feminist after 1905. On the issue of women’s rights, she and Sidney followed rather than led the way, Sidney for lack of interest, Beatrice for a panoply of reasons.
