“I admire The Women’s Press, which has consistently taken risks, and been enterprising and brave.”
– Doris Lessing. Nobel Laureate in Literature
Stephanie Dowrick invites all visitors to this website to join in with the collective creation of an ongoing, on-line archive of the immense achievements of The Women’s Press, between 1977-2003. https://thewomenspress.com/
You are welcome to send your memories, images, inspirations to:
thewomenspressarchive@gmail.com
For those of you who are new to the history of The Women’s Press, we quote from the website:
The Women’s Press was founded in 1977 by New Zealand-born Stephanie Dowrick, then Editorial Manager of Triad Paperbacks (owned by Cape, Chatto, The Bodley Head, with Granada Publishing), with conditional financial support from Palestinian-born Naim Attallah, then Chair of Namara Ltd and of Quartet Books.
[From Wikipedia quoting Naim Attallah: “It was set up with a
hundred £1 shares, with me holding fifty-three percent and Stephanie the balance of forty-seven per cent […] to begin with Stephanie was the only full-time employee and the whole operation was started in her living-room [in fact, the kitchen!] in her house in Bow.” ]
Attallah had impetuously offered Dowrick the chance to “have her own publishing house” on the basis of recognising a fellow visionary and hard worker with first-class experience and contacts. To finance the company – always run on a shoestring, despite the elegant, polished, witty “look” of the books – Naim agreed to back the necessary overdraft for which Dowrick as MD was solely responsible, as she was, also, for the editorial/political direction of the Press and its continuing viability.
The Women’s Press came about through a meeting between Dowrick and Attallah arranged by William Miller and John Boothe, two of the original “quartet” of founders of the progressive Quartet Publishers, which had been the original home for Virago. At that meeting, Dowrick dismissed the idea of commissioning “feminist books” for Quartet Books – recently acquired within the Namara Group. Attallah suggested, reflecting a potent moment in UK publishing and in the still emerging Women’s Liberation Movement, that Dowrick may instead like to take up the challenge of creating and running a distinct publishing house, within but totally independent (editorially) of the Namara Group.
The distinctive “iron” iconography that “branded” TWP was devised by brilliant Canadian artist Donna Muir.
The slogan, “Live authors. Live issues” – devised by Stephanie Dowrick as central to the branding – indicated the intention of The Women’s Press to commission and/or publish books that explicitly and boldly challenged the cultural, political and historical status quo.
Stephanie Dowrick’s motivation for founding The Women’s Press – and supporting it in a variety of roles through most of its history – was political AND professional. In Tribune, 16 July 1986, Stephanie is quoted as saying,
“There is a myth that the reason The Women’s Press came into existence was that it was difficult for women to get published. In fact, this was not the case. It has always been possible for women to get published, and for women to be successful writers. But we have to look at the differences between being a writer who is a woman and a writer who is struggling with ideas that are [legitimately] feminist.
We were looking at the idea of having a publishing house that would respond to the theoretical ideas that the women’s liberation movement was developing. It was also important to develop a feminist publishing house because there were women who would take strong exception to being published in a mainstream publishing house alongside books which were offensive to them, or which were marketed in ways they found offensive.
Another reason for having women’s presses is that if a woman is trying to say something that reflects an experience that isn’t mainstream, and that is challenging of the sexist status quo, then she’s probably going to produce a much stronger kind of work if she works with editors who share her politics. So the existence of the feminist publishing houses, and particularly The Women’s Press, is a statement that there are other kinds of writing which have been marginalised, misunderstood, or simply had not been enabled to come into existence.”
We urge you to visit the website, learn more about The Women’s Press and some of the 500-plus books that were successfully published.
Sexual Politics at The Women’s Press https://thewomenspress.com/sexual-politics/
In a 1978 announcement, Stephanie Dowrick wrote: ‘We are not only asking for the same rights as men, we are also actively reassessing the society in which we are to play an equal part. We are examining history to find our place there and, while demanding power, are questioning where the distortions of power lie.’
What we also learnt and practised [at The Women’s Press] was this. One group of human beings cannot determine the value of other human beings’ lives without reducing us all. I do not think I fully understood as a younger woman that the power of feminism, race justice, gay, environmental and peace politics calls for a new understanding of what it means to be human. That’s what liberation means: liberation from the utterly false proposition that some lives intrinsically matter more than others.”
Stephanie Dowrick, “Feminism’s Retreat”, The Saturday Paper (Melbourne), 6 March 2021.