Invoking Experience as Evidence

Abstract

Abstract: This paper uses the hundreds of private letters that women sent to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1968–9 to explore women's changing interpretations of paid work in the twenty-five years after the Second World War. These working women often invoked their own experiences as evidence the commission should heed, although its staff tended to see the letters as subjective and personal, and thus less useful than official briefs. The letters offer us insight into how women negotiated and interpreted changing patterns of paid work, as the number of working mothers increased significantly in this era. An analysis of the letters revisits feminist debates about the concept of experience: while some feminist writers have become increasingly skeptical of using women's words as ‘authentic’ evidence from the past, others remain committed to the ‘retrieval of experience,’ arguing that we can use the concept in a way that does not reify experience, gloss over differences between women, or ignore the way in which it is interpreted by historical actors using the cultural resources at hand. Following from the second line of argument, the paper also suggests that the letters offer us a sense of connection to and feeling for the past, which should remain important aspects of feminist history.