Caroline Haslett

Dame
Caroline Haslett
DBE
Black and white portrait photograph of Haslett taken about 1924. She is looking into the camera, wearing a dress and resting her chin on her hand. Electrical Association for Women
Born
Caroline Harriet Haslett

(1895-08-17)17 August 1895
Worth, Sussex, England
Died4 January 1957(1957-01-04) (aged 61)
Bungay, Suffolk, England
NationalityEnglish
Occupation(s)Electrical engineer; business woman; educator
Known forFeminism; electrifying the home to liberate women from domestic drudgery. She was a leading professional woman of her age.
TitleDame Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Dame Caroline Harriet Haslett DBE, JP (17 August 1895 – 4 January 1957) was an English electrical engineer, electricity industry administrator and champion of women's rights.[1][2]

She was the first secretary of the Women's Engineering Society and the founder and editor of its journal, The Woman Engineer.[3] She was co-founder, alongside Laura Annie Willson and with the support of Margaret, Lady Moir, of the Electrical Association for Women, which pioneered such 'wonders', as they were described in contemporary magazines,[4][5] as the All-Electric House in Bristol in 1935. She became the first director of the Electrical Association for Women in 1925. Her chief interest was in harnessing the benefits of electrical power to emancipate women from the drudgery household chores, so that they could pursue their own ambitions outside the home.[6] In the early 1920s, few houses had electric light or heating, let alone electrical appliances; the National Grid was not yet in existence.

'Way is being made by electricity for a higher order of women – women set free from drudgery, who have time for reflection; for self-respect. We are coming to an age when the spiritual and higher state of life will have freer development, and this is only possible when women are liberated from soul-destroying drudgery ... I want [every woman] to have leisure to acquaint herself more profoundly with the topics of the day.'

— Caroline Haslett[7]
  1. ^ Citrine; Symons, Eleanor (2011) [2004]. "Haslett, Caroline Harriet". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33751. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Haines, Catharine M.C. (2001). "Haslett, Caroline". International Women in Science: A Biographical Dictionary to 1950. ABC-CLIO. pp. 127–29. ISBN 1576070905.
  3. ^ 'Dame Caroline Haslett: Outstanding Woman Engineer', The Times, 5 January 1957
  4. ^ "The all-electric house in Bristol". Design for To-Day: 5–8. January 1936.
  5. ^ "Dame Caroline Haslett". BBC Woman's Hour.
  6. ^ Law, Cheryl (2000), Women, A Modern Political Dictionary, London, UK: I. B. Tauris.
  7. ^ Electricity and women – the EAW in the inter-war years, University of Westminster, archived from the original on 13 August 2016, retrieved 17 October 2012