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School of Applied Social Sciences

SASS Staff

Publication details for Ms Jean Spence

Spence, J. & Stephenson, C. (2009). Side by side with our men? Women's activism, community and gender in the 1984-5 British Miners' strike. International Labour and Working Class History 75(1): 68-84.

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

This paper explores the gendered concept of community with reference to the activism of women during the UK 1984–1985 miners’ strike. Drawing on texts from the period and reflective discussions twenty years later with women associated with the strike, it interrogates the ways in which the idea of community was used to accommodate the activism of women. We argue that the apparently gender-neutral ideal of mining community carried meanings that had ambiguous political implications for the women and that the strike highlighted paradoxes that question established understanding of female strike activism.