“We Pledge Ourselves to the Masses of Working Girls”: The Distinctive Mission of the Women's Young Christian Workers Movement in its Founding Decades in England (1940s–1960s)

Abstract

“The first important point is to win the young women with whom we work,” explains an early campaign newsletter from the women's English Young Christian Workers (YCW) Movement. In a context where the Catholic community was still a defensive minority, the outward looking mission of the YCW was remarkable and unique. The Movement's praxis was particularly distinctive, focused on a demographic group, working‐class girls and young women, who held little significance in either Church or society. The YCW engaged them as apostles and activists, challenging ecclesial and social assumptions and expectations. This paper draws material from YCW archives and oral interviews to argue that what YCW offered young women in the 1940s–1960s expressed an ecclesiological vision that was ahead of its time. The YCW empowered them to be leaders in a Church where women still rarely spoke or held leadership roles. It also nudged them into a confident construction of their citizenship and agency within secular contexts. This is significant in relation to how the English Catholic Church negotiated its restored presence in a protestant state but is barely recognised in existing historical analysis. The YCW's “leaven in the dough” model of activism within workplaces and other political domains deserves greater notice.