sexual identity: women dressing as men, 16, 44, 56, 64, 91, 92, 132–8, 140–1, 267–75, 382–5; Greek belief in spectrum of sexes, 63, 562, 569–70, 577; men living as women, 91–3; hermaphrodites, 139, 261, 263, 264, 275, 377, 562, 574; Enlightenment/’traditional’ binary model, 213–16, 229, 332, 334, 367, 421–2, 551–5, 558, 562, 565, 566, 570; identifying sex of baby at birth, 367, 421–2, 565; sex-reassignment surgery, 440, 499–500, 549–50, 551–3, 555, 566–7; transgender issues/debates, 522–3, 551–3, 555, 562, 569–71; nature of women in twentieth-century, 549–56, 566–8; ‘intersex’ births, 551, 565; and use of term ‘gender,’ 553–5, 567, 568; Fausto-Sterling identifies five sexes, 554–5, 568; Vilain’s ‘multiple variants,’ 555, 568–9; young women wanting to transition to men, 555, 562; fragility of masculinity, 556, 571; four sexes announced in early-1900s, 566; longing to return to pre-WW2 domestic stereotypes, 566, 567; current science on gender/sex, 568–9; debates about ‘choice,’ 569–70; diversity and variety of, 569–70, 577; misunderstanding/misinformation on, 570–1; non-binary, 570

  sexual inequality: and divorce laws, 3, 7, 203, 254, 343, 375–6, 393–4, 396, 445; and dogma of Church, 21, 64, 68, 121; dogma of women’s inferiority, 21, 64, 65, 66, 68, 565–6; spiritual, 21, 68, 111, 458; equal pay eras, 30, 69, 71, 82, 163, 186, 310; double standards over sexual morality, 51, 83, 276–7, 334, 376, 396; and medieval view of sexuality, 63–6, 87, 93–100, 216; division of women from women, 66, 354, 391, 537–9, 578–9; pushback against post Black Death gains for women, 71–2, 82–3, 87–8, 572; and Protestant reformist faith, 121, 122–3, 124; Tyndale’s ‘weaker vessel’ metaphor, 125–6, 575; idea of ‘women’s work’ invented, 181–2, 184–7; as not questioned by radicals in 1600s, 200; Enlightenment thinking justifies, 213–16, 229, 277, 287–8, 321, 328, 332, 334, 367, 421–2; preserved under William and Mary, 220–1; and Bill of Rights, 220; increasing exclusion in 1700s, 229–30; women writers challenge in post-Reformation century, 244–5; ‘Queen’s footman’ paradox, 245, 341–2, 408, 566; and the Romantic movement, 249–50, 288, 321, 332, 375, 563; sexism as justification for/not cause of, 298; Wollstonecraft’s class-based equality, 338–9; and Victorian male scientists, 420, 423–4, 565–6; in Victorian/Edwardian sport, 448, 449, 453–4, 456; in teaching profession, 456–7; women’s pay during Great War, 470, 471–2; Royal Commission on Equal Pay (1946), 523–4; laws against sexual discrimination (1970s), 525; and Thatcher, 528; women’s liberation marches (1970s), 533–4; in twenty-first century, 555–6, 572–3; in healthcare today, 573–4; design and technology tailored to men, 573; internalised contempt exercised on other women, 578, 579; women’s durability against, 579–81 see also ‘breadwinner wage’; legal status of women

  sexuality, female: medieval views on women’s desire, 59–61, 127; female orgasm, 59, 60, 253, 288, 334, 378, 382, 425, 487, 548, 549; and nuns/enclosed women, 60–1, 106, 109–10, 206; fears of insatiability/voraciousness, 60, 127, 153, 173, 177, 185, 214, 253; St Paul on female desire, 62; sexually assertive/enthusiastic women, 93–5, 97; Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, 97; women secularised/sexualised by Reformation, 111–12; Luther on virginity, 112; repressing of upper-class female desire, 252–3, 262, 288, 289, 332–4, 367–8, 375–6, 423, 425–6, 432–3, 441, 574–5; beliefs over class differences in, 261–2, 375, 564; curative removal of the clitoris, 425–6, 574–5; medical/surgical treatments to cure desire, 425–6, 563, 574–5; doctors link to mental health of elite women, 425–7; and ‘invert’ label, 436, 488; early-twentieth-century debates, 441; greater freedom from 1960s, 541–2, 548–9 see also ‘Nature of Women’ (imaginary label); sapphism/lesbianism

  Shah Jahan Begum of Bhopal, 458

  Shakespeare, William, 165, 287, 575

  Sheen, Gillian, 544

  Shelley, Mary, 387

  Sherard, Robert, 412

  Shore, Jane, 107

  Shrewsbury, 18, 33, 35

  Siddons, Sarah, 380

  Sidney, Mary, 241

  Sidney, Philip, 166

  Sierra Leone, 304–5

  Simcox, Edith, 380

  single women: ‘singlewomen’ status, 19; ‘femme sole’ status, 22, 49, 105, 182, 184; and inheritance laws, 30, 205–6, 318; and rape, 55; opportunities after Black Death, 68–9, 70–1, 77–8, 82, 83–4, 87–8; pushback against post Black Death gains for, 71–2, 82–3, 87–8; increasing numbers of after Black Death, 83–4, 87–8; and witchcraft, 84, 173–4; loss of the nunneries, convents and abbeys, 110–12, 205; control/surveillance/censure of by 1600s, 148–9, 154, 183, 184, 205, 261–2, 282; and poor laws, 148–9, 282; and pregnancy, 148, 149, 152, 373, 496–7; and Bastardy Act (1610), 149; ‘grass wenches,’ 154; as magistrates in sixteenth-century, 162; deserting/runaway husbands, 203, 256, 393; high number of in seventeenth century, 206; move to towns in eighteenth-century, 209; in post-Restoration century, 222–3, 232, 276–7; exclusion of in post-Restoration century, 232, 235; term ‘spinster,’ 276; counted in 1851 census, 377; Victorian ‘surplus woman’ problem, 377; Victorian women’s friendship, 431–2; in feminist organisations, 431, 432; ‘fishing fleet’ in India/Africa, 431; in post-Great War period, 431; in Great War munitions factories, 468–9; conscripted into National Service (1941), 489, 500–1; illegitimate babies during Second World War, 496–7; bullying and belittling of unmarried mothers, 531–2; and Child Support Act (1991), 539

  ‘skimmington rides,’ 50, 195

  slavery: in Anglo-Saxon era, 6; women slaves in Norman England, 8; in Tudor England, 155–6; freed by baptism, 156, 238; runaway slaves, 156, 239, 292, 302–3, 309–10; global trade in, 231, 237–8, 291–5, 298; owned by elite women, 237–8, 298–9; royal court’s ownership of slaves, 237–8; doubts about legality of slavery in England., 238, 292, 297, 302; imported into Europe, 238, 291–4, 295–9; ‘John Brown’ as soldier on The Hannibal, 269; slaves as sign of high status among elite, 291, 296–7; treatment of slaves in England, 292–4, 295–8, 302–4, 309–10; female slave narratives, 295–6; legal abolition of (1833), 296, 306, 307–8; elite women’s view of, 298–9, 306–8, 337–8, 342, 343, 391, 564, 565; racism as justification for/not cause of, 298–9, 339; and Ireland in seventeenth century, 298; slaves protesting against, 302–6; London Emancipation Committee, 303, 307; campaign for the abolition of, 306–10, 337–8, 342, 343, 565; slave trading made illegal (1807), 306; working-class white women protest against, 308–10; Wedgewood anti-slavery token, 338; and nineteenth-century marriage rituals, 374

  Slynn, Mr Justice, 517–18

  Smith, Adam, 247

  Smith, Mary (suffrage campaigner), 342

  Smythe, Pat, 543

  Snell, Hannah, 273–4, 274, 383

  Snow, Dr John, 397

  soapmaking, 35

  social media, 568

  social structure/class: in Anglo-Saxon era, 6–7, 8; landless serfs, 6; villeins, 6; French-speaking Norman elite, 8, 36; in Norman England, 8; emerging ‘middling classes,’ 41, 80, 149, 162–3, 165, 168, 174, 185, 202, 456; household charity declines after Black Death, 72, 147; ‘sumptuary laws,’ 81, 132, 185; dressing as the wrong class, 134; Tudor oppression of working people, 147–50; etiquette and morality rules, 157, 228, 250, 285, 325, 332, 373; posts of ‘companions,’ 167–8, 205, 226, 228, 296; class divisions between women, 200, 229, 336–40, 354, 358, 391, 396–7, 403–4, 405–6, 409, 478; Daniel Defoe’s classes, 210; Restoration power grab, 213; and ‘conduct books’ of Enlightenment, 215–16, 248, 252–3; exclusion of elite women, 227–8, 229–32, 248, 314, 324, 332, 340, 368–9, 445, 460; elite men’s use of prostitutes, 237, 564; London ‘season,’ 250; wet nursing as elite practice, 289; elite definitions of sexual intercourse, 334–6, 380, 382; elite women visiting the poor, 343–4, 397–8; impact of Marriage Act (1753), 371–2; Victorian campaigns to prevent disease, 397–8, 565; expanding middle classes of Victorian era, 442–3; women’s voluntary work in Great War, 462–4; myths over Great War munitions work, 468–70; impact of Great War on women, 471–2; women’s auxiliary services in Second World War, 489

  socialism, 337, 395

  Somerset, Georgina Carol, 551

  Somerville, Mary, 329

  Sopwell Nunnery, near St Albans, 166

  Southampton, 148–9, 171, 193, 206, 222–3, 276

  Southcott, Joanna, 328

  Southey, Robert, 349

  Southwark, 41–2

  Spanish Civil War, 480

  Special Operations Executive, 492–4

  spies/agents, female, 144–6, 383, 388–9, 464–5, 492–4

  Spitfire fighter plane, 492

  sport and leisure, 22, 30, 180–1, 229, 332; women travelling entertainers, 35, 148; women’s footracing, 245–6; in post-Restoration century, 245–7; male takeover of, 332; women defeating men, 366–7; for elite ladies in Victorian/Edwardian era, 445–52; in 1857–1928 period, 445–54; in schools, 456; and Great War, 464; in post-war decades, 543–4; and transgender issues, 569

  St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, abbot of, 56

  St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, 170

  St John, Dame Edith, 81

  St John, Order of, 48

  St John’s College, Cambridge, 104

  St Paul, 62, 63, 64, 458

  St Pol, Marie de, 36

  St Thomas’s Hospital, London, 170

  Stafford, Margaret, 73

  Stanhope, Lady Hester, 329

  Stanley, Sarah Penelope, 383

  Star Chamber, 191, 196

  Starre, Margery, 74

  Stationers’ Company, 232

  Steele, Elizabeth Hughes, 386

  Stephen, King of England, 23, 43, 45

  Stewart, Frances, 254

  Stobart, Mabel St Clair, 465

  Stopes, Marie, 429, 485

  Stratford-upon-Avon, 17

  Stuart, Elizabeth, 167

  Stubbes, Philip, 133–4

  Studley, Catherine, 170–1

  suffragettes, 3, 402, 403, 406–7, 461–2, 471, 566

  ‘sumptuary laws,’ 81, 132, 185

  Sutcliffe, Peter, 516–17, 534

  swimming and diving, 453, 544

  Syers, Madge, 453

  syphilis, 399, 400

  Tax Act (1824), 326

  Taylor, Helen, 405

  Teerlinc, Levina, 158

  temperance clubs/societies, 398

  tennis, 446

  textile industry: home working by women in, 17, 31–3, 224, 233–4, 235–6, 314; domination of by women, 20, 31–3, 78, 223–4; wool trade, 28, 31, 32, 147, 187; Opus Anglicanum, 31–2; silk trade, 31, 70, 104, 159, 212, 223–4, 233–5, 337; move to spinning wheels, 32–3; medieval clothing, 32; female apprentices after Black Death, 70; and Margaret of Anjou, 104; slump in (1629), 191; machine breaking, 210, 212, 315, 348–9, 352–3; mechanisation of spinning/weaving, 212, 233, 315, 348–9, 352–3; Weavers’ Company, 223–4, 234; move from family business model, 233–4, 315, 352; exclusion of women, 233–6, 314, 315; move to factory system, 233, 315, 316, 352–3; spinning jenny invented, 233; threatened by cheap foreign imports, 233, 235, 337; mantua-makers, 235, 236; handloom weavers, 311–12, 315, 324, 352; general strike of cotton workers (1842), 315; power looms, 315, 352–3; ‘Sisterhood of Leicester,’ 352; industrial unrest in post-1815 period, 353; availability of washable textiles, 367; ‘mill girls’ of Lancashire, 405; Dewsbury and Batley Weavers’ Committee, 410–11; after Great War, 474

  Thatcher, Margaret, 526, 528, 538, 546, 578

  theatre: the masque, 35, 65, 139, 140, 155, 157; troupes of strolling players, 35, 164; and cross-dressing, 134, 137, 267–8, 382–3; plays about ‘Moll Cutpurse,’ 136, 137; first theatres in London, 164–5; women-run companies, 164; reopening at restoration, 225, 243; women on stage in women’s parts, 225, 243, 267–8, 324–5; women playwrights, 243, 260

  the Theatre, Shoreditch, 164

  theosophy, 430

  Thomas of Chobham, 42

  Thorkilsdottir, Gytha, Countess of Wessex, 6

  Thornton, Anne Jane, 383–4, 384

  Thornton, Sara, 515–16

  Thorpe Moor, Yorkshire, 188

  Thrale, Hester, 375, 377

  Thynne, Anna, 329

  Thynne, Joan, 149, 160, 168, 185, 201

  Thynne, Lady Isabella, 144

  Tisdall, Sarah, 534

  Todd, Dr Margaret, 433

  Townshend, Dame Eleanor, 79

  trade unions/organised labour: and ‘breadwinner wage,’ 313, 417; support for pay-gap, 313, 417, 484, 571; female membership, 315, 415, 417, 533, 534; ‘combinations,’ 352; nineteenth century evolution of, 353; Dewsbury and Batley Weavers’ Committee, 410–11; male attitudes to women campaigners, 411; women chainmakers of the West Midlands, 411, 411–13; strike by women at Bryant and May (1888), 413–15, 414, 430; general dock strike (1889), 413, 415; ‘great unrest’ (1907–11), 415–16; Union of Women Matchmakers, 415; General Strike (1926), 417–20, 478–9; strike by women transport workers (1918), 417; and Great War, 471; and women as ‘homemakers,’ 472–3; attitudes to women’s employment in 1930s, 484; during Second World War, 500; women strikers in post-WW2 period, 524; national campaign for women’s equal rights (1969), 533; and Grunwick dispute, 534

  transgender issues/debates, 522–3, 551–3, 555, 562, 569–71

  Treason Act (1351), 72

  Treffry, Elizabeth, 102–3

  Trump, Donald, 537

  tuberculosis, 424–5

  Tudor, Princess Elizabeth, 171

  Tudor, Princess Margaret, 171

  Twysden, Elizabeth, 143

  Tyler, Wat, 73, 74

  Tyndale, William, 111, 124–6, 575

  university education, 1, 328, 329, 435, 571; Oxford/Cambridge colleges, 36, 74, 80, 103, 104, 228, 391, 402, 457, 475, 500, 555, 574; teacher-training, 456–7; gradual opening of to women, 457, 475; women and medicine, 459; tradition of women’s exclusion reversed, 555

  urban areas: market towns, 13, 17, 18, 35, 329, 347; growth of in medieval period, 17–21; royal charters, 18; as unhealthy, 18, 209, 286; ‘freeman’/‘townsman’ status for women, 19, 22, 24, 77–8, 80, 158, 171, 182, 222; anti-semitic riots in, 27–8; women work gangs in, 31; medieval businesswomen, 33–5, 78–9, 104–5, 124; brothels/prostitution in, 41–2, 88–9, 107–8, 134–5, 154, 236–7, 361, 399–401, 564; military attacks on, 44–6, 141–2, 144, 579; impact of Black Death, 67, 68–70, 77, 78; Peasants’ Revolt in, 73–5; rising importance of trade, 80–1; and single women, 83–4, 87–8, 148–9, 205–6, 209, 222; growth of in Tudor period, 124, 185; and Civil War, 141–2, 143, 144, 215; Tudor businesswomen, 158, 159–61, 164, 183, 205–6; food riots in, 190–3, 211, 345–7; migration to due to enclosure, 209, 337; slums, 209, 327, 330–1, 371–2, 397, 416, 424, 443; vast growth of in 1700s/1800s, 209, 224, 342; machine breaking in, 212, 348–9, 352–3; eighteenth-century businesswomen, 222–5; workhouses in, 282; loss of rural courtship rituals, 335; radicalism in post-1815 period, 353–7; rent strikes, 416–17 see also guilds

  Urban II, Pope, 48

  usury/moneylending, 9, 20, 26–7, 28, 184, 231

  Vagrancy Acts (1822, 1834, 1844), 361

  vagrants/beggars, 13, 147, 282

  Valois, Abbess Jean de, 14

  Verdi, Giuseppi, La Traviata, 425

  Vesalius, Andreas, 574

  ‘victimology,’ so-called science of, 519

  Victor, Benjamin, 382–3

  Victoria, Queen, 369–71, 373–4, 404, 442, 443–5

  Viking age, 576–7

  Villiers, George, 139

  violence, male: and the Normans, 5–6, 8, 42, 52–6; ‘Penitential Ordinance,’ 8; prostitutes as victims, 42; marital murders, 77, 150, 202, 285, 504–16; public attitudes in post-Restoration century, 284–5; Counting Dead Women website, 504–14; ‘provocation’ excuse, 515; attacks on strangers as relatively rare, 517, 519–20, 570; in prisons, 522, 570–1 see also domestic violence; rape/sexual violence

  Vogt, Karl, 420

  Vyer, Bertha, 434

  wages/earnings: low-paid ‘piecework’ system, 17, 32, 33, 312, 313, 315–16, 320, 413, 526; pay-gap, 82, 148, 163, 181, 186–7, 210, 310–13, 323, 417, 484, 572, 573; and ‘science’ of political economy, 310–13; in ‘sweated’ industries, 398; women’s pay during Great War, 470, 471–2; women’s during Second World War, 494, 495; minimum wage legislation (1999), 526; wife’s earned income separated from husband’s (1988), 545; in twenty-first century, 555–6, 572–3 see also ‘breadwinner wage’; ‘Nature of Women’ (imaginary label)

  Walpole, Robert, 324

  Walsingham, shrine at, 8, 65

  Walters, Catherine ‘Skittles,’ 449, 450

  Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria, 8, 12

  Warburton, Anne, 525

  Ward, Mary, 121, 228

  Ward, Mrs Humphrey, 403

  ‘Wars of the Roses,’ 101–3

  Warwick, Mary Rich, Countess of, 123, 201, 241–2

  Watson, Maud, 446

  Wealden, Alice, 462

  Weavers’ Company, 234

  Webb, Beatrice, 398

  Wedd, Elaine (mother of author), 4

  Week St Mary, Cornwall, 105

  welfare systems, twentieth-century, 479, 525, 526, 527, 529, 531

  Wesley, John, 326

  West Indian Gazette, 536

  West Indies, 473

  ‘Western Rising’ against enclosure, 189–90

  Westminster, 19–20, 41

  Westmorland, Jane Neville, Countess of, 116, 132

  Weston, Mark, 499–500, 500

  Wethered, Joyce, 449

  Wheathill, Anne, 169

  Wheatley, Phillis, 303–4, 305

  Wheeler, Elizabeth, 145–6

  Whig party, 340

  Whitby, Mary Anne, 329

  White, Belle, 453

  Whitehouse, Mary, 537–8

  Whitney, Isabella, 165, 168–9

  Whorwood, Jane, 144

  widows: property ownership by, 7, 20, 23, 29, 69, 78, 79, 104–5, 159–60, 161, 204; great Norman estates run by, 9, 23–4; and inheritance laws, 9, 20, 23, 29, 71, 79, 104–5, 132, 162, 204–5, 226–7; as ‘vowesses,’ 16, 102; guild widows, 19, 20, 35, 79, 104–5, 158; and Magna Carta, 24–5; avoidance of second marriage, 25, 29, 205, 253–4; traditional mourning period for, 29; deteriorating position of in seventeenth century, 204–5; husband’s ‘entail’ on property, 204–5; in post-Restoration century, 222, 232; as jail keepers, 226–7; poor laws in post-Reformation century, 282