The women in the photograph above are Christabel Pankhurst, one of the leaders of the Women’s Social and Political Union (on the right); and Rebecca West, journalist and suffragette (on the left). West wrote for a newspaper edited by Dora Marsden called The Freewoman, an avant-garde feminist journal which had a brief but influential existence before the First World War.

Much has been written about The Freewoman, but one aspect which is sometimes noted but never explored is that a lot of the contributors to it were men. This makes it an excellent source for my research project on the participation of outsiders in social movements: Other People’s Struggles. I am therefore analysing the men’s and women’s contributions to see what points they have in common, and what divides them.

IMAGE CREDITS: REBECCA WEST (CICILY ISABEL ANDREWS), (c. 1912) PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE C. BERESFORD, NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON / CHRISTABEL PANKHURST (DETAIL) UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (DECEMBER 1918) FROM GEORGE GRANTHAM BAIN COLLECTION, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, WASHINGTON DC.