This chapter aims to give a brief introductory account of the position of women in Scottish society between the early years of industrialisation and the aftermath of the First World War. This period has been described as ‘littered with images and stereotypes of women: “Angel in the house”, “the downtrodden factory worker”, “the hapless Magdalen”, and “the strident middle-class suffragette’”. The stereotypes are familiar yet offer rather cardboard cut-out images than a nuanced understanding of what life was like for women in Scotland. The ideology of ‘domesticity’ profoundly influenced and confined women's lives. Yet in many thousands of individual ways women expanded their lives beyond the bounds of home and family. This chapter will explore some of the understandings of ‘woman's sphere’, alongside what Lady Frances Balfour referred to as the ‘three great fights’ of the Women's Movement in Scotland: ‘First Education, then Medicine, then the Suffrage for Women’. The contemporary analysis of the position of women in early Victorian society offered by the Scotswoman, Marion Reid, in her A Plea for Woman, will also be highlighted. Yet from the outset it seems vital to set this into the context of some discussion of the treatment of Scottish women's history to date. This involves recognising the interplay of what might be called the amazing, disappearing woman factor.

The Amazing, Disappearing Woman Factor

For instance, when I tell anyone that I am working on a history of women in Scottish politics since the 1880s, an all-too-familiar response is, ‘Oh, that won't take long!’, or ‘Were there/are there - any?’ Joy Hendry found similar reactions in 1980. She quotes a male Scottish poet, who greeted the news that Chapman intended the publication of a landmark double edition, Woven by Women, devoted to the work of Scottish women poets, with the cry ‘Scottish women poets! Do you mean there are any? MacDiarmid's famous remark that ‘Scottish women of any historical interest are curiously rare’ apparently reflects widely held assumptions.

These assumptions have been challenged - in the past as well as in the present. Some of the earlier challenges took the form of highlighting the contributions of prominent women.