E10 Feminist Publishing: Business Experiments and Innovations

In the 1970s the Women’s Liberation Movement campaigned for women’s rights. But as well as being political activists, many second wave feminists were entrepreneurs, who also experimented with business practices. Dr D-M Withers introduces us to the publishers and book workers of second wave feminism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to discuss how they navigated masculine systems of finance, and equity in running their businesses.

Amy Edwards
Amy is a senior lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Bristol, where she has worked for the past 10 years. Her research focuses on how ‘ordinary people’ experience large economic changes and how people in the past worked, saved, spent, and invested their money. Her first book, Are We Rich Yet? Told the story of how the worlds of business and finance became part of our day-to-day culture. It looked at things like the business press, financial advice columns, investment based boardgames, and the popularity of the filofax in the 1980s. But more recently she has been carrying out a research project that looks at the lives of self-employed women from the 1950s to the 2000s.

  / somsproject  
  / somsdramyedwards  
@somsproject.bsky.social
Book: Amy Edwards, Are We Rich Yet: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (University California Press, 2022)
For more about the project: 'The Secret of My Success': Women and Self-employment in Britain, 1970-2000

D-M Withers
D-M Withers is Lecturer in Publishing at the University of Exeter. Their research focuses on the post-war publishing industries, especially feminist, queer and women-led companies. They have published widely on the history of feminist publishers, Virago Press, including their book, titled Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: the Timely Business of Feminist Publishing which came out in 2021. D-M is also a publisher, and runs Lurid Editions, which publishes queer books from the twentieth century archive. So there is no one better placed to help guide us through the history of women and the publishing industry!

See this and other episodes in the series at https://womensbusiness.club/s/voice

https://www.womeninpublishinghistory....
Lurid Editions - https://www.lurideditions.com/
Link to the Carmen interview with Mavis Nicolson where she talks about not making the bed, and never doing the housework!    • Carmen Callil | Publishing house | Feminis...  
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