Episode description

Sex strikes suggested by Suffragettes, a theatre company devoted to exploring the experiences of women in the UK prison system and the campaign to make women's rights at the heart of human rights and its links with socialist Eastern Europe: Naomi Paxton finds out about new research into women's history.

Her guests are:

Tania Shew specialises in the history of feminist thought. She's currently a Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research working on sex strikes and birth strikes as tactics in the British and American women’s suffrage movements, 1890-1920.

Dr Celia Donert is Associate Professor in Central European History at the University of Cambridge. She is writing a book exploring How Women's Rights became Human Rights: Gender, Socialism, and Postsocialism in Global History, 1917-2017.

Caoimhe Mcavinchey is Professor of Socially Engaged and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University London. She has been working on a project Clean Break: Women, Theatre Organisation and the Criminal Justice System

Chloë Moss is a playwright who has worked with Clean Break on a number of projects.

You can see a film of Chloë's drama Sweatbox on the website https://www.cleanbreak.org.uk/

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research council – part of UKRI.

Presenter: Naomi Paxton Producer: Paula McFarlane