Published in 2020
355 pages
Jane Robinson is also the author of Hearts and Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Piligrimage and How Women Won the Vote and Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education. She was born in Edinburgh and brought up in Yorkshire before going to Oxford University to study English Language and Literature at Somerville College. She has worked in the antiquarian book trade and as an archivist and is now a full-time writer and lecturer, specialising in social history through women’s eyes. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, member of the Society of Authors, and founder member of Writers in Oxford. She is married with two sons and lives in Buckinghamshire. Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders is her eleventh book.
What is this book about?
It is a myth that either of the World Wars liberated women.
The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It marked at once political watershed and a social revolution; the point at which women of 21 and over were recognised in law as being as competent as men. But were they? What actually happened when this bill was passed? This is the story of what happened next.
Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of six women – six pioneers – forging paths in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church. Robinson’s startling study into the public and private lives of these women sheds light not on the desires and ambitions of her subjects but how family and society responded to the working woman and what their legacy looks like today.
This book is written in their honour. It is a book about live subjects: equal opportunity, the gender pay gap, and whether women can expect, or indeed deserve, to have it at all.
“This is an immensely readable history of 20th century working women, lively and well-researched. It makes an excellent companion piece to Helen McCarthy’s history of working mothers, Double Lives.” –from Helen19 on Amazon reviews
