Remembering the suffragettes


Suffragettes.  Reblogged 
We are celebrating one hundred years since women were given the right to vote in the UK though full voting rights to all women were only granted  in 1928. A timeline of women's vote worldwide makes interesting viewing, as it reflects the prejudices held against non-white women, predictably allowed to exercise their political rights only long after their white counterparts did - see for example South Africa, where 'coloured' women were only allowed to vote in 1984 and 'black' women in 1994.  Women are not just women, they are divided along the axis of race and class.
It is now inconceivable that in a democracy women should not vote. It thus makes odd reading that some women were actually opposed to the vote and actively participated in the National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage (1910). The Anti-Suffragists argued that they wanted women to be women, that women had a different role to fulfil and a different mission in life, which was basically that of providing nurture.

Wikipedia image
So much has changed over the past one hundred years and yet, disconcertingly, so much has not. Women are still earning less then men even though they may be doing the same job, they are sexualised and are subjected to violence on an everyday basis. Women realise from very early on that they are not regarded as being equal to men, even though on paper they may be. There are still places in the world where women are not allowed to study - Malala Yousafzai nearly lost her life when, as a young girl in 2012, she opposed the Taliban's ban on the education of women.  She is  one of the youngest ever Nobel prize recipients for peace.  Fatima Bhutto, reviewing Malala's book, co-written with Christina Lamb, very eloquently says: "Malala's fight should be ours too – more inclusion of women, remembrance of the many voiceless and unsung Malalas, and education for all".

Malala. Wikipedia image
The year 2017 has been a wake up call for women, with all the sexual harassment scandals that have come to light and more news of a pay-gap at leading companies, such as the BBC.
It has led women to reconsidering feminism as a life strategy.
Feminism is coming back but I still remember when in the decades following  the second wave feminism  of the 1960s and 1970s women thought that feminism had no longer a raison d'etre, there was no need whatsoever to be feminist (what, an ugly man hater?). Women were thought to have achieved full equality (to men). It was the era of postfeminism. Girl Power -  an undifferentiated,  ambiguous, fashionable celebration of girlhood and a clever marketing ploy too - was all the rage. Young women did not care about feminism at all, which they saw as terribly passé, they just wanted to be sassy Spice Girls. They, the Spices, were actually rather conservative. In a 1996 interview for The Spectator Geri and Victoria (not yet Beckham) identified themselves as 'anti-Europe and pro-Tory' (hear, hear Mrs May), proclaiming "we Spice Girls are true Thatcherites...Thatcher was the first Spice Girl, the pioneer of our ideology — Girl Power."
Yet through this watered down Girl Power some women began reflecting on what it really meant to be women in today's world and it led them to embracing feminism in order to feel truly empowered.
It's great to celebrate the political achievements of women, the fact that the political rights of women have been fully recognised,  and I am certainly happy to join in. But let it not be lip-service. Let us not become complacent, so much still has to be done to safeguard women's rights and entitlement to true equality.

Chanel models at Paris Fashion week 2014 in 'mock-demo' Photo: Guardian 
We have seen  feminism  being recycled in advertising campaigns or on runways. It is not necessarily something detrimental to it, I have faith in its power to resist the onslaught of commercialisation. But it is not the real thing and it is not enough to wear a t-shirt proclaiming 'We should all be feminists' - even though I own up to having one.  
Still, as Caroline Criado-Perez says: "we have to be positive about people wanting to talk about feminism, which has become such a part of popular culture that we are even seeing it in fashion shows...I think we need to embrace anything that highlights the fact that women should be equal, but they aren’t...so anything that shows feminism isn’t this scary horrible thing run by man-hating women has to be a positive thing".
Celebrating the vote for women should be yet another moment of reflection and it should stimulate women (and men) to fight for a more just and equal society, which we are far from having achieved.
And perhaps we should start wearing t-shirts saying "I am a contemporary suffragette" because, as Emily Thornberry writes "we owe it to the suffragettes to use the power they fought for".

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