‘100% feminist’: how Eleanor Rathbone invented child benefit – and changed women’s lives for ever
She was an MP and author with a formidable reputation, fighting for the rights of women and refugees, and opposing the appeasement of Hitler. Why isn’t she better known today?
Ladies please reblog to give her the recognition she deserves
By Susanna Rustin Thu 4 Jul 2024
My used copy of the first edition of The Disinherited Family arrives in the post from a secondhand bookseller in Lancashire. A dark blue hardback inscribed with the name of its first owner, Miss M Marshall, and the year of publication, 1924, it cost just £12.99. I am not a collector of old tomes but am thrilled to have this one. It has a case to be considered among the most important feminist economics books ever written.
Its centenary has so far received little, if any, attention. Yet the arguments it sets out are the reason nearly all mothers in the UK receive child benefit from the government. Its author, Eleanor Rathbone, was one of the most influential women in politics in the first half of the 20th century. She led the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec, the main suffragist organisation, also formerly known as the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) from 1919, when Millicent Fawcett stood down, until the roughly five million women who were not enfranchised in 1918 gained the vote 10 years later. In 1929, aged 57, she became an MP, and remained in parliament until her death in 1946. While there, she built up a formidable reputation based on her advocacy for women’s rights, welfare reform and the rights of refugees, and her opposition to the appeasement of Hitler.
It would not be true to say that Eleanor Rathbone has been forgotten. Her portrait by James Gunn hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Twenty years ago she was the subject of a fine biography and she is remembered at Somerville college, Oxford – where she studied in the 1890s and ran a society called the Associated Prigs. (While the name was a joke, Rathbone did have a priggish side – as well as being an original thinker, tremendous campaigner, and stubborn, sensitive personality.) She also features in Rachel Reeves’s book The Women Who Made Modern Economics, although Reeves – who hopes shortly to become the UK’s first female chancellor – pays more attention to her contemporary, Beatrice Webb.
A thrilling tome … The Disinherited Family by Eleanor Rathbone. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
But Rathbone, who came from a wealthy dynasty of nonconformist merchants, does not have anything like the name-recognition of the Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett, or of pioneering politicians including Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson. Nor does she enjoy the cachet of writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose polemic about women’s opportunities, A Room of One’s Own, was published five years after Rathbone’s magnum opus.
There are many reasons for Rathbone’s relative obscurity. One is that she was the first woman elected to parliament as an independent (and one of a handful of men at the time). Thus there is no political party with an interest in turning her into an icon. Having spent the past three years writing a book about the British women’s movement, I am embarrassed to admit that when I started, I didn’t know who she was.
Rathbone was not the first person to propose state benefits paid to mothers. The endowment of motherhood or family allowances, as the policy was known, was written about by the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, and tried out as a project of the Fabian Women’s Group, who published their findings in a pamphlet in 1912. But Rathbone pushed the idea to the forefront. A first attempt to get Nusec to adopt it was knocked back in 1921, and she then spent three years conducting research. The title she gave the book she produced, The Disinherited Family, reflected her view that women and children were being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth.
The problem, as she saw it, was one of distribution. While the wage system in industrialised countries treated all workers on a given pay grade the same, some households needed more money than others. While unions argued for higher wages across the board, Rathbone believed the state should supplement the incomes of larger families. She opened the book with an archly phrased rhetorical question: “Whether there is any subject in the world of equal importance that has received so little consideration as the economic status of the family?” She went on to accuse economists of behaving as if they were “self-propagating bachelors” – so little did the lives of mothers appear to interest them.
Rathbone’s twin aims were to end wives’ dependence on husbands and reward their domestic labour. Family allowances paid directly to them could either be spent on housekeeping or childcare, enabling them to go out to work. Ellen Wilkinson, the radical Labour MP for Middlesbrough (and future minister for education), was among early supporters. William Beveridge read the book when he was director of the London School of Economics, declared himself a convert and introduced one of the first schemes of family-linked payments for his staff.
But others were strongly opposed. Conservative objections to such a radical expansion of the state were predictable. But they were echoed by liberal feminists including Millicent Fawcett, who called the plan “a step in the direction of practical socialism”. Trade unions preferred to push for a living wage, while some male MPs thought the policy undermined the role of men as breadwinners. Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finally swung behind family allowances in 1942. As the war drew to a close, Rathbone led a backbench rebellion against ministers who wanted to pay the benefit to fathers instead.
Rathbone celebrates the Silver Jubilee of the Women’s Vote in London, 20 February 1943. Photograph: Picture Post/Getty Images
It is for this signature policy that she is most often remembered today. At a time when hundreds of thousands of children have been pushed into poverty by the two-child limit on benefit payments, Rathbone’s advocacy on behalf of larger families could hardly be more relevant. The limit, devised by George Osborne, applies to universal and child tax credits – and not child benefit itself. But Rishi Sunak’s government announced changes to the latter in this year’s budget. From 2026, eligibility will be assessed on a household rather than individual basis. This is intended to limit payments to better-off, dual-income families. But the UK Women’s Budget Group and others have objected on grounds that child benefit should retain its original purpose of directly remunerating primary carers (the vast majority of them mothers) for the work of rearing children. It remains to be seen whether this plan will be carried through by the next government.
Rathbone once told the House of Commons she was “100% feminist”, and few MPs have been as single-minded in their commitment to women’s causes. As president of Nusec (the law-abiding wing of the suffrage campaign), she played a vital role in finishing the job of winning votes for women.
The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in women’s suffrage, partly due to the centenary of the first women’s suffrage act. Thanks to a brilliant campaign by Caroline Criado Perez, a statue of Millicent Fawcett, the nonmilitant suffragist leader, now stands in Westminster, a few minutes walk from the bronze memorial of Emmeline Pankhurst erected in 1930. Suffragette direct action has long been a source of fascination. What is less well known is that militants played little part in the movement after 1918. It was law-abiding constitutionalists – suffragists rather than suffragettes – who pushed through the 1920s to win votes for the younger and poorer women who did not yet have them. Rathbone helped lead this final phase of the campaign, along with Conservative MP Nancy Astor and others.
Rathbone was highly critical of the militants, and once claimed that they “came within an inch of wrecking the suffrage movement, perhaps for a generation”. Today, with climate groups including Just Stop Oil copying the suffragette tactic of vandalising paintings, it is worth remembering that many women’s suffrage campaigners opposed such methods.
Schismatic though it was, the suffrage movement at least had a shared goal. An even greater challenge for feminists in the 1920s was agreeing on future priorities. Equal pay, parental rights and an end to the sexual double standard were among demands that had broad support. After the arrival in the House of Commons of the first female MPs, legislative successes included the removal of the bar on women’s entry to the professions, new rights for mothers and widows’ pensions. But there were also fierce disagreements.
Tensions between class and sexual politics were longstanding, with some on the left regarding feminism as a distraction. The Labour MP Marion Phillips, for example, thought membership of single-sex groups placed women “in danger of getting their political opinions muddled”. There was also renewed conflict over protective legislation – the name given to employment laws that differentiated between men and women. While such measures included maternity leave and safety rules for pregnant women, many feminists believed their true purpose was to keep jobs for men – and prevent female workers from competing.
Underlying such arguments was the question of whether women, once enfranchised, should strive for equal treatment, or push for measures designed to address their specific needs. As the debate grew more heated, partisans on either side gave themselves the labels of “old” and “new” feminists. While the former, also called equalitarians, wanted to focus on the obstacles that prevented women from participating in public life on the same terms as men, the new feminists led by Rathbone sought to pioneer an innovative, woman-centred politics. Since this brought to the fore issues such as reproductive health and mothers’ poverty, it is known as “maternalist feminism”.
Rathbone and other Liverpool suffragettes campaigning in 1910. Photograph: Shawshots/Alamy
The faultline extended beyond Britain. But Rathbone and her foes had some of the angriest clashes. At one international convention, Lady Rhondda, a wealthy former suffragette, used a speech to deride rivals who chose to “putter away” at welfare work, instead of the issues she considered important.
The specific policy points at issue have, of course, changed over the past century. But arguments about how much emphasis feminists should place on biological differences between men and women carry on.
Eleanor Rathbone did not live long enough to see the welfare state, including child benefit paid to mothers, take root in postwar Britain. Her election to parliament coincided with the Depression, and the lengthening shadows of fascism and nazism meant that she, like her colleagues, became preoccupied with foreign affairs. In the general election of 1935, the number of female MPs fell from 15 to nine, meaning Rathbone’s was one of just a handful of women’s voices. She used hers to oppose the policy of appeasement, and support the rights of refugees, including those escaping Franco’s Spain. During the war she helped run an extra-parliamentary “woman-power committee”, which advocated for female workers.
She also became a supporter of Indian women’s rights, though her liberal imperialism led to tensions with Indian feminists. During the war she angered India’s most eminent writer, Rabindranath Tagore, and its future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when she attacked the Congress party’s policy of noncooperation with Britain’s war effort. Tagore criticised what he called the “sheer insolent self-complacency” of her demand that the anti-colonial struggle should be set aside while Britain fought Germany.
Rathbone turned down a damehood. After their first shared house in Westminster was bombed, she and her life partner, the Scottish social worker Elizabeth Macadam, moved around the corner to a flat on Tufton Street (Macadam destroyed their letters, meaning that Rathbone’s intimate life remains obscure, but historians believe the relationship was platonic). From there they moved to a larger, quieter house in Highgate. On 2 January 1946, Rathbone suddenly died.
Rathbone’s blue plaque at Tufton Court. Photograph: PjrPlaques/Alamy
A blue plaque on Tufton Street commemorates her as the “pioneer of family allowances” – providing an alternative claim on posterity for an address more commonly associated with the Brexit campaign, since a house a few doors down became its headquarters. She is remembered, too, in Liverpool, where her experience of dispersing welfare to desperately poor soldiers’ wives in the first world war changed the course of her life, and where one of her former homes is being restored by the university.
I don’t believe in ghosts. But walking in Westminster recently, I imagined her hastening across St James’s Park to one of her meetings at Nancy Astor’s house near the London Library. Today, suffragettes are celebrated for their innovative direct action. But Rathbone blazed a trail, too, with her dedication as a campaigner, writer, lobbyist and “100% feminist” parliamentarian.
Sexed: A History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin is published by Polity Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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Abortion in The Witcher Books
Would anyone like to come along with me on a deep dive regarding abortion in The Witcher books? Not enough people talk about the fact that Geralt of Rivia is explicitly pro-choice and that the sorceresses are seen providing reproductive care, including abortion, on multiple occasions. So, let's do that.
There are a lot of things you can say about The Witcher books, feminism, misogyny, and the male gaze. (I am considering doing my first video on this very topic. It is complicated. This is not a 'the books are perfect' post) But one thing we can never say is that they are wishy washy about bodily autonomy, and more specifically, abortion. (In fact, that is the entire point of Ciri and Geralt's arc, which I will get to at the end of the post)
This topic came up awhile back because a 'witcher school' was closed after the owners were found to have ties to far right organizations, including anti-abortion organizations. So, I did a little thread on twitter about it, wondering how you can call yourself a Witcher fan (to the extent that you license a fan activity business!), and miss the entire fucking point. It was my most popular (and ofc hated by others) tweet ever, which was interesting, but I was mostly surprised that so many people were shocked to learn that Geralt of Rivia is, as a character, canonically, verbally, explicitly pro-abortion rights.
So I’m going to put the info here too in case any of you here find it interesting. Obviously there will be spoilers for the books.
TW: discussion of sexual assault, pregnancy, and basically anything having to do with reproductive health.
Before I start, I want to say that the book refers to abortion in reference to rights for women throughout, so that is the language in this article. I want to be clear that I (as an individual) understand that abortion is relevant to other genders and that I support it for trans men, non binary people, literally anyone. Abortion should be safe and on demand for all. But this is not a post analyzing my views on abortion, but the appearance of abortion in fictional psuedo medieval-esque fantasy world of The Witcher books.
Ok, I’ll start with the fact that sorceresses provide reproductive care in the books, including abortions.
In, The Last Wish (p210) Geralt tries to give Nenneke money to help Yen with fertility treatments. (In the books he does not mock her desire to have a child) He knows Yen wants to be a mother, and he wants to help. Nenneke replies that she does not need his money, and that providing abortions pays a hell of a lot better than witchering.
"You're more of an idiot than I thought." Nenneke picked up the basket from the ground. "A costly treatment? Help? Geralt, these jewels of yours are, to her, knickknacks not worth spitting on. Do you know how much Yennefer can earn for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy for a great lady?"
Witches as providers of abortion is a very common trope in fantasy fiction for a very good reason. In order to stamp out paganism and polytheism, European colonists vilified the village wise woman as a murderer of children, hence the 'boil them in a pot, stuff them in the oven' stories about witches. Many people interpret this as the vilification of abortion. In the classic 1972 feminist text Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Ehrenreich and English quote Malleus Maleficarum, the witch hunting manual written by Catholic clergymen in 1487, to show that women providing reproductive healthcare was one of the 'characteristics' of a witch.
The witch that provides reproductive healthcare fits in very well in the witcher world, where Geralt and the witchers are embodiments of the working class who are used as tools and exploited. They are loathed until they are needed. The same is true of abortion providers. They are hated until they are needed, and they are always needed.
It also fits in well with the themes of class. In the Witcher books, it is stated multiple times that it is upper class women who are accessing this care from sorceresses. That is real. It is the truth that outlawing something very very often only means outlawing it for the poor and working class. The wealthy always find a way.
In Season of Storms, the sorceress Coral and her assistant Mozaïk provide reproductive healthcare to "wealthy, upper-class ladies" on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Geralt comes to speak to Coral in chapter sixteen and both of the women are wearing white doctor coats. They have just helped a woman deliver a baby and it is implied that the baby died and they are both upset. They do not want Geralt there, because (it seems to me) they need space to grieve, and they do not expect him to understand. They send send him away, suggesting he go spend time with Dandelion.
She walked over and kissed him on the cheek without a word. Her lips were cold. And she had dark circles under her eyes.
She smelled of medicine. And the fluid she used as disinfectant. It was a nasty, morbid scent. A scent full of fear.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she forestalled him...She looked at him and it was a faraway look, from beyond a chasm of time and events between them. He needed a few seconds to understand how deep that chasm was and how remote were the events separating them.
"Maybe the day after tomorrow would be better. Go to town. Meet that poet, he's been worried about you. But now go, please. I have to see a patient."
After she had gone, he glanced at Mozaïk....
"We had a birth this morning," she said, and her voice was a little different. "A difficult one. She decided to use forceps. And everything that could have gone badly did."
"I understand."
"I doubt it."
"Goodbye Mozaïk."
There are multiple other references to abortion in relation to sorceresses; I won't quote them all. But I'll leave you with one other reference. In Lady of the Lake (pp114), in a very funny moment, Angoulême says she has a 'small problem' and Fringilla replies:
"I understand," nodded the sorceress. "It's nothing dreadful. When was your last period?"
Angoulême is rather put out at the thought of being pregnant.
"What do you mean?" Angoulême leaped to her feet, frightening the chickens. "It's nothing of the sort. It's something completely different!"
So, sorceresses provide abortions and other reproductive care.
But what about the men? What about the heroes?
Well, several of the male protagonists state explicitly in no uncertain terms that abortion is an inalienable, sacred right. That includes Geralt himself.
Here is Geralt taking to Queen Calanthe in Sword of Destiny (p345). She asks him whether he hates his mother. In the course of his answer, Geralt says that abortion is “a choice which should be respected, for it is the holy and irrefutable right of every woman.”
"A choice. A choice which should be respected, for it is the holy and irrefutable right of every woman."
That’s a strong goddamn statement. There’s no doubting his meaning or the strength of his conviction. And it isn’t just Geralt. Dandelion (Jaskier), Cahir (he is traveling with Geralt as part of the hansa in the books, please set aside anything you think you know about him from TWN), and Regis (Geralts dear friend) all explicitly support abortion rights, quite passionately.
In Baptism of Fire (p317), one of Geralt’s dear friends (my favorite, the love of my life, Milva) shares that she is pregnant. They are on a brutal journey through a war zone looking for Ciri. So it’s complicated. Another friend, barber surgeon vampire Regis has prepared an elixir for her to induce an abortion. So, not only do sorceresses provide abortions, but so do vampire barber surgeons, one of the most lovable heroic characters in the books.
But before he administers it, Regis gathers the rest of the company. Regis knows Milva feels like shit at the prospect of burdening them, so he is worried that she is making the decision under duress. They don’t immediately understand why he is bringing the matter to them.
At first they think he is asking for opinions on whether she should get an abortion. They are baffled. Cahir answers first. He says in Nilfgaard it is always a woman’s right to choose.
"In Nilfgaard," Cahir said, blushing and lowering his head, "the woman decides. No one has the right to influence her decision. Regis said that Milva is certain she wants the medicament. Only for that reason, absolutely only for that reason, have I begun-in spite of myself-to think of it as an established fact. And to think about the consequences. But I'm a foreigner, who doesn't know...I ought not to get involved. I apologize."
So, Cahir says that maybe it’s a foreigner thing. Maybe it’s different for them. Dandelion (Jaskier) is offended and outraged by the implication that they believe any differently.
"What for?" the troubadour asked, surprised. "Do you think we're savages, Nilfgaardian? Primitive tribes, obeying some sort of shamanic taboo? It's obvious that only the woman can make a decision like that. It's her inalienable right. If Milva decides to--"
At this point, Geralt cuts Dandelion off. Geralt alone actually understands that there is something else happening here, that they are misunderstanding Regis and further questions are in order. Geralt begs Dandelion to stfu, which the bard misinterprets. He thinks Geralt is disagreeing with him and is considering opposing Milva's right to choose. Dandelion LOSES HIS TEMPER at the thought that Geralt would deny Milva her right.
Geralt becomes even more irritated and angry at the implication that he would do such a thing.
So, not only do we have witches as abortionists in The Witcher books, we have men, the hero (Geralt) his best friend (Dandelion), my beloved Regis, and Cahir say explicitly that abortion is an inalienable right.
And that should be no surprise.
Bodily autonomy and reproductive rights is at the very heart of the story. You do not have The Witcher story without it. It drives the narrative, the conflict, and Geralt and Yen's character arcs.
There is a criticism I see floating around quite a bit, that having Yen's story driven by her desire to be a mom and to physically reproduce is anti-feminist, or at least a tired reductive trope of women being defined by their maternal instincts.
I get that. I get tired of womanhood being defined by reproduction and motherhood as well. Biological essentialism when it comes to gender is exhausting and regressive. However, in this context, it is entirely clear to me that the point is NOT that all women should want to be pregnant. The point is the bodily autonomy, to be pregnant if you want to, and to not be pregnant if you don't want to.
Look at Ciri. She essentially becomes the main character by the end, and the idea of being pregnant repulses her.
So, in Lady of the Lake, Ciri is being held captive by elves, who want to do the same thing to her that everyone else does--breed her. The deal they offer her is, she does not 'have' to have sex with anyone until she is impregnated, but if she doesn't, she can't leave. (So, if she is to access what every human wants--freedom--she has to. This is still rape. It is coerced sex) She is understandably distraught and enraged. The part of that deal she seems most disgusted by, is the idea that she could be pregnant.
"But I don't want to!" yelled Ciri so loudly that the mare skittered beneath her. "I don't want to, understand? I don't want to! The thought of a bloody parasite being implanted in me is sickening. I feel nauseous when I think the parasite will grow inside me, that--"
She broke off, seeing the faces of the elf-women.
So yes, she is distraught that her bodily autonomy is being taken from her yet again. But perhaps the most upsetting part is the idea that she could be pregnant. It physically repulses her.
Now. Let's put this in context.
In this psuedo-medieval-esque setting with royal families, being used as a brood mare is COMMON and ACCEPTED. IN FACT, Calanthe, Ciri's OWN GRANDMOTHER was marrying her off against her will, betrothing her as a child. No one thought this was weird. It's your duty, right? No big deal. Even Geralt, when he first met Ciri, thought it would be a better life for her. Sure, it's against her will. But it's physically safe and luxurious. And he leaves her behind in Brokilon.
But at some point, Geralt puts two and two together. He connects his trauma with hers. He makes a decision that even if almost no one around him in his culture or on the continent, sees the importance of her bodily autonomy or agrees with him, he's protecting her. Not just against death, but against anyone taking her choice from her. When he is having a mental breakdown in Brokilon, worried about her, he tells Dandelion that he is trying to protect her from what happened to him. He doesn't say, she can't die. Or I can't let her be killed. He says she cannot be alone. She cannot go through what I went through. Here, I"ll let him say it: (Time of Contempt, p240)
"Listen to what?" shouted the Witcher, before his voice suddenly faltered. "I can't leave---I can't just leave her to her fate. She's completely alone...She cannot be left alone, Dandelion. You'll never understand that. No one will ever understand that, but I know. If she remains alone, the same thing will happen to her as once happened to me...You'll never understand that..."
"I do understand. Which is why I'm coming with you."
Honestly, I tear up thinking about it.
And Yen, well, she has a similar arc.
Yen has been abused and used as a tool, and along the way she has accepted that this is the way things are. Yen has even done the same to others. But she looked into that little face, those wide green eyes, and at some point she also connected the dots. There's another way of doing things, and maybe it is possible for a little girl to choose for herself. And even if it isn't possible, maybe the important thing is to fight for it. Maybe Yen can give her whole life to let a child just be a child.
Yen goes through torture and imprisonment for Ciri. She shoots lightning at a god, she shouts at a goddess, she drops through a portal into the sea, she gives up every last shred of political power she has spend ninety years accruing, she WILLINGLY tries to give her own life MULTIPLES TIMES, to save Ciri.
And from what? Death? Not always. At the heart of all this sacrifice is that Yen has made a decision that Ciri gets be a human who is given the dignity and respect of deciding what to do with her own body. To be a kid, not a tool. To be a person. To be free.
So Ciri gets to say, actually, for me, the idea of pregnancy is terrifying and repulsive and therefore, I don't want to do it.
In the end, Geralt, a person whose body was tortured and experimented on before he was too young to consent, and Yen, a woman who was abused and used, and BOTH of whom had their reproductive rights taken from them, decide to love Ciri and protect her bodily autonomy at any and all costs.
That is what drives the story. It drives the narrative. It drives both Geralt and Yen's character arcs. It is, in fact, the entire point.
So it should not be a surprise that abortion, and the right to have an abortion if necessary, is an inextricable part of The Witcher world. No, you cannot analyze these books and find 'perfect politics'. They are not politically correct. And there are many parts I can critique. I mean, we can critique anything. (and I do)
But I find it endlessly interesting that people who are conservative or right wing think that this property 'belongs' to them, and they want to push everyone else out, when all they have to do is pay the most minimal amount of attention and have really only two (2) brain cells to rub together, to see that they are indeed, incorrect.
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