Plymouth Powerful Women

The Heritage Lottery funded Plymouth Powerful Women project arose out of a collaboration with the Hoe Neighbourhood Forum and the University of Plymouth to research and pay tribute to women who have made a significant contribution to shaping the city over the 100 years between 1919, when the first woman elected as an MP took her seat in the Commons, and 2019, with the city looking ahead to the Mayflower 400 celebrations. The focus on women was chosen because Plymouth has an unparalleled record, nationally, of electing women MPs – and because we realised the significant, but substantially hidden, contribution to that record made by Plymouth’s women of the post-1919 era.

This website is produced as part of our ongoing project, which will conclude formally in September 2021, but has a built-in active legacy period of twelve months. It has been led by Penny Tarrant (HNF); Professor Kim Stevenson (UoP) created the trail, aided by Hannah Pooley (PCC) who developed the app; Professor Judith Rowbotham (UoP) is the historical consultant and researcher for the project; responsible for expanding the PPW profiles and Rob Giles (UoP) developed the website, while Alexis Bowater, of Bowater Communications and co-founder of the Plymouth Women in Business Networking group, has been responsible for our media strategy.

Our objective

Our ongoing objective is to leave a community legacy which will sustain a lasting consciousness of the city’s proud heritage of Powerful Women, women who may seem ordinary, but have made an extraordinary impact on the city and its environment, and on the lives of its citizens. We are fully aware that the names we are highlighting through this project represent some only of those who deserve to be better known for their work and impact. The restrictions of lockdown has meant that much of our research has had to be done online, including the information sent to us by Plymothians about women in their family, and that in itself has curtailed our ability to find out about some names we would have liked to include from the start. We hope that publicising this resource at this stage will enable it to be a tool to encourage others who know to come forward and tell Plymouth about other Powerful Women of these last 100 years, and inspire projects by schools and students, and a range of community groups, to uncover more and to make sure that the contribution of Plymouth’s women is interwoven into the conscious heritage of the city. The initial trail produced by our project gives one model of how this could be done, with a selection made on the basis of geographical manageability around the Hoe and its neighbourhood, but NOT with any sense of the women highlighted being the most important or significant of those whose brief biographies appear here. We also provide a Resources page, to direct users to other material which can be used to develop, or to explain, the project.