The project examined how women in Portsmouth and the surrounding areas were involved in local and national activism.
A stone plaque celebrating inspiring women activists in Portsmouth is being unveiled in Guildhall Square on Wednesday 10 May at 10am.
The plaque, funded by Portsmouth City Council, recognises those who took part in the Women's Community Activism project, led by the University of Portsmouth and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The project examined how women in Portsmouth and the surrounding areas were involved in local and national activism – inspired by the fight for equality for all women in all walks of life.
It was led by Dr Laurel Forster and Dr Sue Bruley, who worked in collaboration with the local library, the U3A, volunteers, schools and community groups, to unearth and record the impact of feminism and women’s activism in Portsmouth since the 1960s.
Many Portsmouth women who have, since the Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s, actively campaigned for women’s rights and set up practical initiatives in the Portsmouth area to improve the lives of women and their families, came forward to tell their stories.
Many of the interviewees focussed on the grass-roots campaigning that supported the development of one of the earliest rape-crisis telephone lines and women’s refuge centre. Others spoke of their work in minority groups within the city, fighting racism and supporting women from all backgrounds.
They interviewed women from a range of backgrounds and with different interests in raising feminist consciousness and in community issues - women working as teachers, city counsellors, faith leaders, or to improve housing conditions for families. There are accounts of women’s pioneering work in the Royal Navy and elsewhere in local factories, offices and the university, campaigning for equal rights at work.
From these, the project developed a number of pieces of work including nearly 60 recorded oral histories, photographs and stories that were digitally preserved and transferred to the Portsmouth History Centre, a website, a project booklet, student learning pack, and a mobile exhibition.
Dr Forster, Reader in Cultural History in the University’s Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries, said: “The city of Portsmouth, dominated by its naval dockyard, has traditionally celebrated and commemorated the achievements of men, and was often considered to be little touched by feminism.
“Many Portsmouth women who have, since the Women’s Liberation Movement of the late 1960s, actively campaigned for women’s rights and set up practical initiatives in the Portsmouth area to improve the lives of women and their families, came forward to tell their stories.
“Portsmouth’s own branch of the Women’s Liberation Movement was remembered by many, with its consciousness-raising meetings. The women of Portsmouth actively campaigned for peace and many stories were told of Greenham Common Peace camps and anti-nuclear demonstrations.
“Many of the interviewees focussed on the grass-roots campaigning that supported the development of one of the earliest rape-crisis telephone lines and women’s refuge centre. Others spoke of their work in minority groups within the city, fighting racism and supporting women from all backgrounds.”
The project recorded the impact of feminism and women’s activism in Portsmouth since the 1960s.
The plaque will be unveiled by Laurel Foster and the Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth, Marie Costa, who was a major contributor to this project and to the commissioning of the plaque. She said: “This project has highlighted some of the contributions that women of Portsmouth from all social classes, young or old, have made to the economic, social and cultural life of the city. The plaque goes a long way to represent this missing history and I am pleased to have been part of it.”
History of Feminism in Portsmouth
The city of Portsmouth, dominated by its naval dockyard, has traditionally celebrated and commemorated the achievements of men, and was considered little touched by feminism. However, the research expertise of Dr Laurel Forster and Dr Sue Bruley, in collaboration with local community groups, has led to the rediscovery of a history of feminist campaigning since the 1960s.
0:04
Portsmouth is a very famous naval city and has a huge dockyard as well.
0:09
And both of those combined have always meant that the history of Portsmouth is predominantly a masculine history.
0:18
The main focus of the project was to capture those oral histories,
0:23
those testimonials, those life stories from different women across the city before they forgot.
0:31
I served in the Royal Navy for 34 years.
0:35
The Women's Royal Naval Service was a separate service to the Royal Navy,
0:40
and I went through for officer in 1985 and still at that time the Wrens was very much a shore based service.
0:49
I was a counsellor here for 18 years.
0:53
I would walk into a room and maybe somebody would be coming into the room to talk to the counsellors and then walk in and say, Don't send a child.
1:03
It's because I had a ponytail and I was young.
1:08
I was one of a small group of women who helped to set up the Portsmouth Women's Aid Refuge.
1:12
We were looking for a place of safety for women who experienced violence in the home.
1:16
The initial thing, of course, was to find a house.
1:20
I phoned the council.
1:21
Three properties here in 1930s were really, really poor and not enough properties.
1:27
There was huge frustration.
1:30
You know, we were circumscribed.
1:31
We couldn't take decisions.
1:33
We didn't have any money.
1:36
When I arrived at Portsmouth, I would get involved in community voluntary activities and tackling the authorities.
1:44
It was very, very difficult.
1:46
Male dominated council and who didn't want anything to do with women in any position.
1:54
We got this sense that the, you know, the suspicion would be that we were all very well-meaning and probably quite energetic and enthusiastic,
2:02
but actually we probably didn't know what we were doing.
2:05
I became the chair of Posent Multicultural Group and although I made the leader of the council, etc., etc.
2:13
No one took any notice of me.
2:16
And so it was a battle.
2:17
You felt as though you weren't quite taken that seriously.
2:21
So you changed.
2:23
I think that's how I developed a deeper voice.
2:27
There were a lot of challenges when women first went to see.
2:31
There was still a lot of resentment at that time.
2:33
There was an awful lot of aurorae in the press, and it wasn't very polite.
2:37
We had the wives marching in Portsmouth against women going to sea and stealing their husbands,
2:44
and that we shouldn't have women on board their husband's warships.
2:48
So that was quite challenging.
2:52
Researchers at Portsmouth have done some great work on Portsmouth as a naval town, but mostly that focuses on men.
3:02
And women have worked hard to make the city what it is and to stand up for their rights to improve conditions within the city.
3:13
Sue Bruley and I are both academics studying feminism for a very long time.
3:18
We invited women into the university, women from all walks of life, women who had worked for the city, worked for their communities in different ways,
3:29
really, to tell their stories, to give their testimonials, to talk about their activism.
3:36
What had they done for the city?
3:40
I was interested in particular issues like housing issues, not just repairs, but trying to get new properties.
3:48
And one of the reasons is because people were continually wanting out of Portsea and we didn't want people to keep moving.
3:54
We wanted people to stay.
3:57
So the way to get that was to improve the properties and get more properties.
4:03
So there were a number of women involved in the group.
4:07
At the same time, the council were knocking down old houses.
4:11
Some of the women said, Why are they knocking those houses down?
4:14
We could we could get them done up.
4:16
You know, there would be more houses for us to live in.
4:19
So one of the issues was to try and stop the demolition.
4:23
So they went up and they stood in front of the bulldozers.
4:26
My fellow counsellor.
4:27
She was knocked through a window.
4:30
A number of the women were arrested and put in the cells.
4:34
I was sitting there taking all the numbers as who to phone, what grounds to phone, which husbands to tell, and how to take care of everything.
4:43
Your confidence comes by wanting to to do something, wanting to change it, and also having others around you that want the same thing.
4:53
We were the first women's aid in the country to produce its annual report.
4:57
It was a professional piece of work and I think almost more than any other single thing.
5:03
This document reassured people that we perhaps could be trusted with this relatively small amount of money,
5:10
without these men kind of tossing around to see if we were doing the right thing.
5:17
One of the most helpful people on the project was Marie Costa, because at first, I think she was quite hesitant to come into the university,
5:25
and I think she thought that Sue and I might be two stuffy academics, not really interested in people beyond the academe.
5:34
When I first heard the project, I thought it wasn't for me.
5:37
Most of the people there were all Caucasian and I was the odd one out.
5:45
Laurel said
5:47
"We want women who come from diverse backgrounds."
5:50
"We want everybody included."
5:52
So it's not just about white women.
5:54
That history is missing in Portsmouth, and I need to to fill that gap.
6:00
So I felt that.
6:02
This is my role in it.
6:04
I've got to and I have a voice now and I need to speak up for everybody who can't be there.
6:09
By going in regularly, I found I could ask questions and contribute something or even challenge something, and I think that was a turning point for me.
6:27
Portsmouth is a very diverse and multicultural city, and we wanted to reach as many different communities as we could.
6:37
We managed to get to a group of Chinese women and we managed to get to Bangladeshi communities.
6:44
Marie helped us with all of that.
6:50
For me, collaboration and research is absolutely vital.
6:56
So that's why I got involved.
6:58
And I'm really glad I did because, of course, I've met other women now and made new connections, which of course be useful for new campaigns.
7:07
It's important to understand that no city is just about men.
7:13
It's really important to demonstrate women's activism and the significance of feminism to their lives.
7:21
And it's really important to capture this history before it disappears.
7:26
A lot of it is just sitting up here.
7:28
It's memories that we have and memories that you've left behind because things have moved on.
7:34
And if you don't capture them, then they're just going to sort of just be an amorphous mass in the background of history,
7:42
without anybody really sort of recognising that this was an incredibly amazing period of change.
7:48
And I think it's just really important to recognise that it's, you know, it's not always been that way,
7:54
and people have had to work hard so that you can be where you are today.
8:06
There's masses of documentation about how men lived and what they achieved in Portsmouth and very little about women.
8:16
It's important to redress that balance.
8:19
My mother died when I was two.
8:22
I'd love to have known what she did for a living.
8:24
There is absolutely no official record of what my mother and I'm only talking now one or two generations back.
8:31
That's why something like this is so important.
8:35
Feminism isn't just about what happened on the marches in the streets of London,
8:40
but it's also what happened in our local city, and in this case in Portsmouth.
8:47
I think I felt that women were beginning to be heard and not just seen,
8:53
take up the mantle and fight their corner and want to be represented in the history of Portsmouth, because that's missing, still missing.
9:03
You don't have any statues of.
9:04
If there is, it's the odd one.
9:06
Even women in the forces are not seen anywhere or represented anywhere.
9:11
So it was good to see that women are saying, you know, we have done something.
9:18
We should be included in the history.
9:21
After years of being male dominated, we want to be heard and represented everywhere.
9:29
It was a very busy year trying to capture the stories of as many women as we could.
9:38
But I am immensely proud of the work that we did in that year, and we have achieved a fantastic archive forever.