Women ‘hold the world together’ through their emotional labour in relationships and families, unpaid housework, mothering and caring work regardless of their jobs outside the home too. They have borne the heaviest burden of the Covid−19 epidemic on society worldwide. Yet the emotional and physical impact of their work remains undervalued. They still experience sexism in the workplace, and the intersectional factors of race, class and deprivation magnify their suffering. Feminism identified the ‘problem with no name’ which became a diagnosis of anxiety then depression and women are twice likely as men to be diagnosed with these common mental health problems, anxiety and depression, and this excess of depression is real, it is not simply unhappiness, but is neverthlesless related to particular stresses of the lives we lead. Historically, we were precribed benzodiazepines and now antidepressants, which do help many. However, health care systems largely ignore the massive part that gender plays in why more women than men get depressed. There is inadequate access for many women to the kind of therapy and support they need. Women need to come together to create these therapeutic spaces.

Chapter 6 uses the fictional working-class Jemima’s account of the poor laws and the laws of settlement and removal to discuss a series of cases involving poor and pauper women in interaction with the law. Material is drawn from magistrates’ proceedings and from the records of the court of King’s Bench, where some of the cases, including that of the slave servant Charlotte Howe, were sent on appeal. The judges’ (including William Blackstone and chief justice Mansfield) attitudes towards the poor laws are discussed.