Jane Robinson

215,000 women in the UK belong to the WI. Their membership crosses class and recently huge numbers of young women have been recruited. This book reveals how they are, and always were, a force to be reckoned with.

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919 was one of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern Britain. It should have marked a social revolution, opening the doors of the traditional professions to women who had worked so hard during the War, and welcoming them inside as equals. But what really happened?

Ladies Can't Climb Ladders focuses on the lives of pioneering women forging careers in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church. In her startling study into the public and private worlds of these unsung heroines, Jane Robinson sheds light on their desires and ambitions, and how family and society responded to this emerging class of working women.

Born in Jamaica in 1805, Mary Seacole became an independent doctress, combining herbal remedies with sound surgical techniques. At the outbreak of the Crimean War she arrived in London hoping to join Florence Nightingale. Deemed unsuitable, she made her own way to Balaklava, where she founded the successful British Hotel.