No Women Allowed: a new project for paid subscribers
For a while now, I’ve been thinking about how to develop this Substack community. I like spending time here, I like reading the work of other Substack writers and I so appreciate all the comments from you, my much-appreciated subscribers. So now I want to spread out a bit, put down roots, redecorate, hang up some nice pictures, put in some soft furnishings and make it a more welcoming place to spend time.
Mentoring
I considered offering some ‘how to research and write creative non-fiction’ posts and classes - after all, I’ve taught creative writing for years. But what excites me most about supporting other people’s writing are one-to-one interactions, in which I might usefully engage with other writers’ work in a more profound and prolonged way than classes or workshops allow, and with some actual live conversations. Substack is not the place for one-to-one mentoring or manuscript feedback, but if this is something in which you might be interested, then I’ve set out what I offer by way of mentoring and feedback on my website, so please do take a look.
No Women Allowed
What I’m going to undertake here is a brand new project, solely for Substack, called No Women Allowed.
No Women Allowed will be an ongoing project in which, every fortnight, I will narrate a different case study of how men have banned women from certain places or activities - and how women have resisted. These posts will recount the sheer extent and variety of limitations that men have imposed on women’s freedoms around the world, past and present. I will explore how and when those restrictions came about, what they’ve come to mean over time, how they’ve been enforced and the lengths to which men go to defend them. And, on the other side of the coin, I will investigate the tenacity and creativity of women who have fought to overturn those limitations. I’ll ask: who pressed for change, what were their personal and political motivations, what arguments did they use, what methods did they deploy, how long did it take, what resistance did they encounter, did it work in the end, and, if so, how secure was the change? In the case of campaigns that were unsuccessful, I’ll try to ascertain why they failed.
Over time, the No Women Allowed project will build up a bank of stories and examples from which it will be possible to draw out some generalisations.
On the one hand, these will concern how and why some men try to restrict women’s freedoms with particular fervour in certain eras and places, and what particular freedoms are most likely to be targeted. I will try and answer questions such as: do men try and restrict women’s presence in certain activities or locations more often than others? What else is going on for men when these bans are devised? Which men are most likely to favour bans and limitations on women? What are the reasons that men give, in public and in private, for prohibiting or restricting women? What purpose do the bans serve? Why does banning women feel more pressing for men at certain times and places in history than at others?
On the other hand, these stories will also help us to piece together ideas about the most effective mechanisms of bringing about feminist change. I want to drill down and discover the mechanisms by which individuals, communities, institutions and governments change their minds and overturn bans on women’s freedoms. I want to find out whether different methods of feminist campaigning are required in times of overall progress, from in times of backlash. Do progressive changes happen when campaigners find the right arguments, incentives and methods - or does change happen when men’s resistance generally weakens? My intention is for this project to provide useful models to anyone involved in feminist change-making or anyone who wants to better understand how they themselves might make lasting changes in their own lives.
I anticipate that this project will also challenge some popular misconceptions about women’s history. When a ban is overturned, there’s often a tendency to think that that ban had always been in place, officially or unofficially, and that it’s only recently that, as a society, we’ve become more enlightened and granted women more freedoms. This has the effect of making women’s freedom feel like a new-fangled invention, something bestowed by benevolent far-sighted men to whom we should feel grateful. It also represents women’s freedom as something opposed to tradition and nostalgia, and it positions women as recent interlopers into the realm in which they’ve been permitted to (re)enter. But I suspect that, in many case studies, that’s just not true. I suspect that many limitations on women’s freedoms were imposed much more recently than we might guess; and that, when those limitations were lifted, women were not being granted entry to a brand new realm of freedom for the first time, but were actually being returned to freedoms they had possessed long before the bans had been imposed.
There are lots of examples in sport of how bans can give us a false idea about the history of women’s participation. For example, in 2014, the FIBT (Fédération Internationale de Bobsleigh et de Tobogganing) lifted the ban on women’s participation in 4-person mixed-sex or single-sex bobsleigh teams, and in 2024, the Cresta Run in St Moritz lifted the ban on women’s participation in the Grand National tobogganing race. It’s tempting to think that, until that point, women had always been debarred from such adrenaline and mountain sports. After all, the image of Victorian ladies zooming head-first down mountains at 75mph seems ludicrous, right? The male-dominated FIBT certainly positioned itself as an enlightened and benevolent trail-blazer when it overturned the ban on women in 2014. Its president patted himself on the back for how ‘We follow the spirit of our time’, and other men praised him for instigating ‘an obvious and natural progression’ in the sport. Commentators treated women who duly participated in 4-person teams after 2014 as utter newcomers to the sport, and American bobsleigh pilot Elana Meyers Taylor described how ‘the way everyone was acting it was like they were shocked that a woman could drive a sled. Still internationally there’s some resistance.’
But, actually, the truth is that women have as long a history in bobsleighing and tobogganing as men do. Women and men once participated in bobsleighing and toboganning on completely equal terms. In the 1890s, it was mandatory for early bobsleigh teams to be mixed sex, and women’s involvement was literally built into the Cresta Run, with certain corners named by and after early female tobogganists. It was only in 1923 that the FIBT went on to ban women from participating in 4-person teams in international competition, and 1929 that the Cresta Run banned female tobogganists. In the intervening century between those bans’ imposition and their lifting, women’s historic role in those sports were forgotten, and women were subsequently treated as newcomers. But, in reality, when those bans were overturned in 2014 and 2024, women weren’t being given new freedoms: we were simply having freedoms restored which we had possessed right from the beginning of those sports, over one hundred years ago, and which were subsequently stolen from us by men.
So that’s a short taster of the type of stories in which I’m interested. I’m really excited about beginning this project, and I hope that you are too!
From now on, these will be the options open to my subscribers:
Free subscribers:
regular newsletter - around 2-3 per month
Paid subscribers (annually and monthly):
regular newsletter - around 2-3 per month
access to the No Women Allowed project (posts every fortnight)
access to the archive of my past newsletters and past No Women Allowed posts
Founding members
regular newsletter - around 2-3 per month
access to the No Women Allowed project (posts every fortnight)
access to the archive of my past newsletters and past No Women Allowed posts
free signed copy of my book In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors and copies of any forthcoming books/ebooks by me
I have set up a 14-day free trial option for anyone who would like to sample one of the No Women Allowed posts, and explore the archive, before committing to a subscription. I hope you’d like to join me on this project!
I've done quite a bit of research, reading and my own writing on this subject.I was particularly incensed about women being banned from the hierarchy in the Anglican Church ( until recently).I wrote about an early campaigner Edith Picton Turbervill and also put her on Wikipedia.I am currently trying to campaign for a blue plaque for her in the town where she became the first female ( and only female so far) Labour MP.
Of course politics is another field, as is education.The End Sexism in Schools campaign is attempting to challenge the sexism in curriculum choices.( I was a member of the history team until recently).
Visible Women project is another one ( more statues), as is Monumental Women in Wales.
Writing and research is part of the push to end discrimination but we must also do stuff.And that takes a lot of commitment doesn't it?Reading your 'Map of a Nation' book and finding it fascinating as love walking and also have a map ( ordnance type real paper fanatic )husband.😁👍
This sounds like a wonderful project. Unfortunately, despite believing that women are the most-discriminated-against group in the world, I haven't done enough research to contribute anything. Over the years I felt that, being a man, my participation in women's liberation would be seen as just another way to usurp women from their rightful positions. Also, my main interest is in religion and metaphysics. I do have one thought, though: This project could turn out to be voluminous. The number of examples of women's oppression are huge and growing every day, especially now that there are so many trans women willing to knock women aside. Still, I'll be here reading the articles.