Formation of the Married Women’s Association, 1938

Thompson, Sharon ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2569-856X 2024. Formation of the Married Women’s Association, 1938. Auchmuty, Rosemary, Rackley, Erika and Takayanagi, Mari, eds. Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years: Not for the Want of Trying, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 259-266. (10.5040/9781509969753.ch-032)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

The Married Women’s Association (MWA) was the first pressure group of the twentieth century to demand, as its core focus, legal and economic equality for spouses. Formed in 1938, the MWA emphasised the language of equal partnership in marriage and sought to reform the law so that spouses would acquire rights in their partners’ property during marriage – an ambition that was never achieved yet influenced family law in subtler ways. In demanding what the MWA dubbed a ‘new marriage law’, the Association politicised the family sphere, arguing that legal and economic equality inside the home would enable women to be better equipped to also pursue equality in the public sphere. And by representing housewives in a legal setting, the MWA mounted the first significant challenge against the legal status of married women since the Married Women’s Property Act (MWPA) 1882

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Law
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D501 World War I D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D731 World War II D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D839 Post-war History, 1945 on D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain K Law > K Law (General) K Law > KD England and Wales
Publisher:	Bloomsbury
ISBN:	9781509969722
Last Modified:	22 Aug 2025 13:22
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/164980

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item