ABSTRACT
Women’s legal position as citizens, in Britain, has been intertwined with their legal status as wives. In the mid-nineteenth century property and marriage were indivisible. Any property, which a woman owned, became her husband’s upon marriage, and a woman, herself, became her husband’s property. A combination of gender stratification in schools, low educational attainments, opportunities for marriage, the norms of ‘good’ motherhood, lack of public child care facilities, low wages and a stratified labour market combine to produce a host of intangible barriers to women’s political participation on equal terms with men. Formal political participation is traditionally linked to high socioeconomic status and income, and the majority of women have neither. In addition, differences in life style and attitudes separate working-class from middle-class women. Paradoxically, women’s success over the abortion issue of 1980 may lead to greater participation by women in direct action.
