Sylvia Pankhurst and the "˜New"™ Maternity: A Pioneering Contribution to the Struggle for Equality in the Context of the British Suffragettes

Abstract

Almost a hundred years before the appearance of the slogan "˜The personal is political"™, 19th and early 20th Century feminists understood the fact that women"™s discrimination was hindering their equal participation in the public sphere and how this was closely linked with their situation of oppression and lack of rights in the private sphere especially regarding the double standard morality codes and maternity. The suffragette and socialist Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960) shared the critical thinking which rejected the ideology of the different nature of the sexes; she proposed an alternative model regarding the social organization of the domestic space and dedicated a considerable part of her social and political activity to promote initiatives aimed to solve the problems of working women and mothers. Pankhurst also contributed with significant and original proposals in order to defend women"™s right to a freely chosen motherhood.