The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
Elizabeth Abbott in the Woman’s Leader 1927 declared that
the ‘new feminism’ was not feminism at all:
The issue is not between ‘old’ and ‘new’ feminism. (There is
no such thing as ‘new’ feminism, just as there is no such
thing as ‘new’ freedom. There is freedom; and there is
tyranny.) The issue is between feminism—equalitarianism—
and that which is not feminism. 14
Abbott explained that the status of motherhood could not be
raised until the status of women generally was changed.
Motherhood would be valued when women were valued and to
be valued women must have the same rights and opportunities
as men. Trying to raise the status of motherhood whilst
abondoning the fight for equality, she asserted, was doomed to
failure.
In embracing the cause of motherhood the new feminists
offered no challenge to the traditional sex-role system. No
suggestion was made that men might share childcare or domestic
work. There was no suggestion that the state should provide so
that men might stay at home and look after children whilst
women went out to work. But it was in the reiteration of the
idea that women had ‘laws of their own nature’, the basis of
separate spheres ideology, that the new feminists were most at
variance with those pre-war feminists who had fought so hard
for the right of women to work outside the home and earn a
living wage, so that they would have a choice not to be wholly
dependent upon men. In abandoning the fight for equality and
embracing the endowment of motherhood, Rathbone betrayed
the interests of spinsters, lesbians, and any women who wished
to escape from unsatisfactory relationships with men.
In 1927 the equal rights supporters on the council of NUSEC
resigned. In 1928 after the final stage of franchise extension to
women, the 200 local suffrage societies in NUSEC split into
two wings. One was the National Council for Equal Citizenship
which was to press for further equal rights legislation and the
other was the Union of Townswomen’s Guilds which was
modelled on the Women’s Institutes and intended to play an
educational role. The Townswomen’s Guilds grew and thrived
whilst the political wing of the organisation declined so that by
1932 there were 51 delegates to the NUSEC conference from
the political societies and 183 from the guilds. The decline of
the politcal societies accelerated from this time. 15 The
Townswomen’s Guilds were mainly concerned with home-
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