Service clubs, citizenship and equality: gender relations and middle-class associations in Britain between the wars

Author: McCarthy, Helen

Source: Historical Research, Volume 81, Number 213, August 2008 , pp. 531-552(22)

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Abstract:

This article explores the changing character of gender relations in inter-war Britain through the prism of a little-studied set of middle-class organizations known as service clubs. Drawing on organizational records, the article uncovers the gendered meanings which men and women attached to the ideology of good citizenship promoted within the movement, and analyses the separate club structures which ensured that members associated primarily with others of their own sex. Despite this segregation, the article concludes that the decades after 1918 witnessed a shift towards greater equality within middle-class associational life, a phenomenon which can only be fully understood by integrating recent studies of men and masculinity with longer-established accounts of women and femininity.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00433.x

Affiliations: 1: Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Publication date: 2008-08-01