Imperialism and women

Several articles of interest in this week's Socialist Worker touch on the question of women and empire. The first by Sadie Robinson is a historical overview of how 'Imperialist powers have repeatedly captured the language of women’s rights and used it to justify imperialism, while simultaneously blocking any reforms that could help liberate women.' In the same issue, Sally Campbell examines why and how women were oppressed in the first place, and finally Michael Rosen invokes a character from Charles Dicken's novel Great Expectations, Miss Havisham, to examine why British politicians are always in the process of constructing a decaying notion of 'Britishness' as a national identity that is rooted in a nostalgia for Empire instead of facing up to the realities of modern British society and its true place in the world.