1980s[edit]

In 1982, Ros de Lanerolle became managing director of the company. Under Dowrick's leadership The Women's Press had differentiated itself from Virago by emphasising contemporary political concerns, using the slogan "Live Authors, Live Issues". Dowrick had published many of the leading radical feminist writers of the day, including Andrea Dworkin, Phyllis Chesler, Shulamith Firestone, Louise Berkinow, Susan Griffin, as well as Canadian writers including Alice Munro and Joan Barfoot. Their early fiction writers included Janet Frame (NZ), Lisa Alther (USA), Joyce Kornblatt (USA) and Michèle Roberts (UK). They published a number of books in collaboration with Frauenoffensive, Munich, and Sara, Amsterdam. Early commissioned writers included Joanna Ryan, Lucy Goodison and Sheila Ernst. De Lanerolle continued the Press's effort to publish Black and Third World women's writing. Among early African-American writers to be published were Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Walker, as well as Maori writer Patricia Grace (NZ). In 1983, the Press had commercial success with the British publication of Alice Walker's bestseller The Color Purple, and it also published Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988) and Pauline Melville's Shape-Shifter (1990). From 1985 to 1991, the Press also had a feminist science fiction list.^[5]


However, a publishing recession in the late 1980s and early 1990s left The Women's Press making losses. Though de Lanerolle argued that the cause was a general recession, and that the company was recovering, Attallah blamed the attention paid to Third World women writers [This is arguable. As a Palestinian, Attallah had given great emphasis in his own publishing to marginalised Middle Eastern writers]. In late 1990, Attallah appointed Mary Hemming as deputy managing director, and in early 1991 rejected an attempted buyout offer of £500,000 by de Lanerolle. De Lanerolle was forced to resign and accept a redundancy payout, and five other staff resigned in solidarity with her. Attallah appointed himself the firm's interim managing director and briefly recalled Dowrick from Australia, before they together appointed Kathy Gale as managing director.^[3] Twenty-three Women's Press authors, including Merle Collins, Michèle Roberts, Gillian Slovo and Sheila Jeffreys, wrote to The Guardian to distance themselves from Attallah's actions.^[6] Stephanie Dowrick was appointed chair and continued in that role for many years.