Guest blog by Dr Eleanor Peters.
In February 1955, the British Government issued a White Paper announcing its 10-year program for nuclear power stations. The Electrical Association for Women (EAW) responded with unwavering support asserting that ‘the development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes is essential not only to the economy of this country, but to the progress of our civilisation’.[i] Their sentiments echoed the industry’s assertion that nuclear energy was needed to meet the growing demand for electricity in post-war Britain. The EAW continued to uphold a positive nuclear narrative amid rising anti-nuclear sentiment in the second half of the twentieth century.
The EAW’s longstanding pro-nuclear stance prompts a re-evaluation of how women’s organisations contributed to the development of a national nuclear energy programme—not as passive supporters, but as active collaborators with the industry. Typically, studies of women and nuclear history have focused on protest, highlighting women’s involvement in the environmental movement and Greenham Common Peace Camp.[ii] Insights from the Electrical Age and the wider EAW archive contribute to ongoing historiographical debates about how nuclear energy was controlled, represented, and contested in post-war Britain.
This blog focuses on the EAW’s activities during Ann McMullan’s directorship (1976-1986). This period witnessed the rise of a significant women-led anti-nuclear movement in Britain, catalysed by the arrival of US Cruise Missiles at Greenham in 1983 and the founding of the Greenham Common Peace Camp. Using EAW records, we can investigate the tensions between technological innovation and feminist ideologies and understand the role of women in negotiating diverse and often contentious perspectives on nuclear energy.
Ann McMullan
In 1976, Ann McMullan became EAW director following a career in public relations. Quickly, McMullan set about ‘broadening minds’ on the nuclear issue.[iii] Between the 1950s and 1980s, the British electricity industry delivered a large and well-resourced effort to communicate nuclear science to the public.[iv] McMullan upheld the industry’s educational efforts, believing opposition to nuclear power stemmed not from ignorance but from misinformation. In a 1977 Electrical Age article McMullan expressed that ‘ordinary people’ struggled to ‘form careful and unbiased opinions of their own’, citing concern over the ‘growing influence of the media and the communications industries’.[v]
The Electrical Age was a useful tool at McMullan’s disposal. Since the end of the Second World War the Electrical Age had promoted a positive image of nuclear energy, reporting on members’ field trips to power stations, and publishing articles that displayed nuclear power stations as symbols of national pride and a second industrial revolution. Bucolic images of nuclear power stations periodically featured on the front cover of the magazine.
With McMullan as director, the coverage of nuclear power in the Electrical Age shows notable spikes in 1977 and 1980—exceeding references to gas, coal, hydro, or wind power during the same period. The first spike coincided with the 1977 Windscale Inquiry—which recommended the approval of a proposed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Windscale. The EAW maintained that the risks associated with generating nuclear energy were low and that industry safety standards were high. The second peak in references to nuclear energy came with the aftermath of the 1979 oil crisis.
Nuclear Energy and Aspirational Living
For McMullan, nuclear power was the antidote to the energy crises of the 1970s and women’s drudgery in the home. Women continued to undertake most of the domestic labour within the home—a reality highlighted by Ann Oakley in her influential 1974 study The Sociology of Housework, which revealed the repetitive nature of such work and the dissatisfaction it often produced.[vi] The Electrical Age promoted the notion that nuclear power could deliver aspirational visions of modern living, domestic convenience, and technological progress. If nuclear power could potentially supply cheap, clean, and limitless electricity, women would finally be liberated from the home.
McMullan stressed the need to embrace nuclear power because the ‘genie of the switch’ could no longer be taken for granted to provide us with light; clean our carpets; polish our floors; wash our clothes or dishes, and dry them; freeze or refrigerate our food; warm or cool us; cook for us; entertain us; protect our property; and serve us in many other ways.’[vii] Nuclear power was directly correlated with greater diversity of electrical appliances in the home. Rejecting nuclear power threatened hard-won improvements in post-war living standards.
Although the EAW provided energy saving advice, their publications simultaneously promoted high-consumption lifestyles, urging readers overhaul their kitchen with ‘a face-lift and an up-dating of equipment’. EAW home economist Caroline Knight recommended kitchen gadgets such as deep fat fryers producing ‘delicious chips’; slow cookers, food processors, automatic electric kettles, can openers, carving knives and yoghurt makers.[viii] Nuclear power would be vital in unlocking the door to the boundless innovative kitchen gadgetry.
Get Into LANE
In 1977, the EAW announced their forthcoming ‘Get Into LANE’ programme as a corporate effort to ‘get into learning about nuclear energy’, contributing to the larger patchwork of industry efforts to inform and reassure the public.[ix]
Split into eight information sheets, each one explored a different aspect of nuclear energy, its production, and its uses. Get Into LANE demystified industry jargon and promoted ongoing engagement with the industry through power station visits and employee interaction. McMullan dismissed what she considered to be the ‘apocalyptic fantasies’ of ecological groups. The tone regarding radiation risk was reassuring; the more pressing matter was the energy crisis.
By McMullan’s admission, ‘Get Into LANE’ was a departure from the EAW’s usual educational programme of learning about the use of electricity in the home. McMullan maintained that the EAW was neutral on power generation methods, yet she determined that without a nuclear power programme, there would be disastrous energy shortages that would prevent the development of an ‘electrical society’ and hinder future generations.[x]
The EAW intended Get Into LANE to educate ‘ordinary non-technical people,’ recommending its use for school and colleges. McMullan also wanted to reach the ‘ordinary home-makers’ who ‘have found themselves becoming interested in energy affairs and more involved in the decision-making process surrounding the country’s energy future.’[xi]
Yet, the EAW did not recognise that ‘ordinary home-makers’ were not a homogenous group to be persuaded toward a pro-nuclear stance. Concerns about nuclear power and its generation, along with scepticism toward industry representatives, were complex and shaped by local contexts as well as diverse strands of feminist thought.
Women’s Liberation
In 1980, Spare Rib, the longest-running publication of the Women’s Liberation Movement, published a feature: ‘Nuclear Power: It’ll Cost the Earth’. The report outlined concerns ranging from health threats posed by radiation to the economic costs attached to the construction, maintenance, and decommissioning of nuclear power stations.
In direct opposition to the assertion that nuclear power enhances living standards, Spare Rib contributors argued that electricity industry representatives were ‘pushing the equation that happiness depends on high living standards which depend on high energy consumption. The ‘Think Electric’ campaign would have us invest in consumer non-durables such as electric potato peelers and toothbrushes. Women, forced back into the thrilling confines of the nuclear family when they (…) fail to get the new (…) jobs in nuclear power plants, could at least measure out their happiness in electric coffee spoons. It is in the industry’s interests – not ours – to get us as major consumers hooked on electricity’.[xii]
Spare Rib’s objection to nuclear generated electricity, reflected part of a broader feminist critique of rampant capitalist consumption. The demands of the Women’s Liberation Movement focused on practical changes such as access to free contraception, abortion, and adequate childcare provision—not on consumer goods like electric food processors, can openers, or yoghurt makers.
Later in 1980, speaking at the Electrical Women’s Round Table in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Ann McMullan continued to link electricity with women’s domestic liberation urging her audience to‘think very carefully indeed before indulging in the folly of abandoning or under-employing a highly-developed and manifestly beneficent technology on purely doctrinaire grounds—whether moral, political, ecological or whatever’.[xiii]
Anti-nuclear activists continued to reject the idea that nuclear-generated electricity could ensure women’s domestic liberation. After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) proposed a nationwide protest at electricity showrooms across Britain, blaming nuclear contamination for increasing women’s ‘unacceptable burden’ of caring for children and community.[xiv]
Conclusion
Ann McMullan strengthened the EAW’s alliance with the nuclear power industry amid national nuclear anxiety and growing concerns over radiological hazards associated with power stations. Exploring the EAW’s records reveals the agency of women in the promotion of a positive nuclear narrative and their role in communicating nuclear science. Founded in the context of first-wave feminism, the EAW attempted to map its early founding motivations—relieving women from domestic drudgery—onto the nuclear issue, framing nuclear power as essential to women’s domestic liberation and linking it to aspirational postwar lifestyles.
However, increasingly, this framing appeared out of step with the concerns of the Women’s Liberation Movement, which emphasised environmentalism and critiques of consumer culture. The EAW did not fully grasp the growing complexity and force of feminist anti-nuclear critiques.
In 1981, McMullan acknowledged that the EAW, like many other women’s organisations, were struggling to recruit new members amongst the younger age groups fearing that the organisation produced an ‘elderly’ image.[xv] The withdrawal of funding and subsequent closure of the EAW in 1986 suggests that the electricity industry no longer viewed it as essential to its public education strategy. This raises important questions: did the EAW ultimately fail to meet the industry’s expectations, or did it fall short in representing and addressing the nuclear concerns of the women it sought to engage?
About the author
Dr Eleanor Peters is recipient of an Elphinstone Scholarship from the University of Aberdeen who investigates the intersection between gender, technology, and science. She was awarded her PhD in June 2023. Her research focuses on women’s roles as mediators of science and technology. She is currently vice-convenor of Women’s History Scotland and is published in Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, Women’s History Review , Journal of Scottish Historical Studies and Nature Reviews Physics.
[i] Phyllis Thomson, ‘Tremendous Prospects the Peaceful Use of Atomic Power’, Electrical Age 6, no.2 (1955): 54-56, 54.
[ii] Jill Liddington, The Long Road to Greenham: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain since 1820 (London: Virago, 1989).
[iii] Ann McMullan, ‘An Informed Opinion’, Electrical Age 8, no. 38 (1977): 164-165.
[iv] Thomas Lean and Sally Horrocks, ‘Good Nuclear Neighbours: The British Electricity Industry and the Communication of Nuclear Power to the Public’, History of Science Communication 16, no. 3 (2017): 1–16.
[v] McMullan, ‘An Informed Opinion’,164-165.
[vi] Ann Oakley, The Sociology of Housework (London: Martin Robertson, 1974).
[vii] Ann McMullan, ‘Doing One’s Energy Homework in the ‘80s’, Electric Living, Spring 1980, 3.
[viii] Caroline Knight, ‘Revolution in the Kitchen’, Electric Living, Spring 1980, 12-13.
[ix] Electrical Association for Women, Get Into LANE (London: EAW [Publications] Ltd, 1980), NAEST 093/09/26, IET Archives.
[x] Ann McMullan, ‘Getting Into LANE – EAW Style’, Electrical Age 8, no. 39 (1977): 2-3.
[xi] McMullan, ‘Doing One’s Energy Homework’, 3.
[xii] ‘Nuclear Power: It’ll Cost the Earth’, Spare Rib,no. 91 (1980): 6-8, 7.
[xiii] Ann McMullan, ‘The Woman’s Perspective: An address given to the Electrical Women’s Round Table, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA on September 24,1980’, Electric Living, Winter 1980, 3-6, 3.
[xiv] Janice Owens, “Break the Nuclear Chain on International Women’s Day for Disarmament: Say No to Nuclear Electricity on May 24th at Your Local Showroom,” May 17, 1986, Kathleen Miller Archive, GB 1534 KM/3/2/1, Glasgow Women’s Library.
[xv] Ann McMullan, ‘Women’s Organisations and their Future’, Electric Living, Summer 1981, 3-4, 3.