As long as women are not free the people are not free, Poster, 1970s © See Red Workshop TWL 2004.904.1
Women need the Vote, Poster, 1910-12
© The Women's Library
TWL 1998.91
How to be a Domestic Goddess by
Nigella Lawson, Cookbook, 2000
© Random House TWL 641.5 LAW
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What Women Want is a returning display of items from our collections. Read about the 2008 showing elsewhere on this site. |
What Women Want: Stories from The Women's Library
6 October 2005 - 26 August 2006
Freedom. Equality. Security. Adventure. Domestic Bliss. What Women Want assessed what women have campaigned, fought and longed for, both past and present in a thought-provoking exhibition and events programme.
Drawn from The Women's Library's unique collections, What Women Want showed the extraordinary range of material the Library holds and the stories that it can tell. It included iconic objects, such as banners carried by suffragettes when campaigning for the right to vote, and early editions of Spare Rib and Nova magazines, as well as more personal objects such as t-shirts, badges and zines that convey the beliefs and desires of their original owners.
The journals and written accounts of women who travelled the world before the advent of cheap flights demonstrated a desire for adventure and freedom beyond the confines of conventional Edwardian society, whilst in the 1980s, the journeys made by many women to the Peace Camps at Greenham Common were shown to be equally life-changing. Such campaigns for global peace and security were counterbalanced with visual material from campaigns against domestic violence, offering women safety and security at a most basic, personal level.
On the home front, Nigella Lawson's baking bible How to be a Domestic Goddess and Barbara Cartland's curiously pink Recipes for Lovers stood in stark contrast to Erin Pizzey's The Slut's Cookbook, just as the 1970s Why be a Wife campaign (slogan: Is there life after marriage?) contrasted with the aspirational glamour and idealised romance of Asian Bride magazine.
Equality at work and the right to work, equal pay and equal opportunities all featured as issues that resonate as much today as in past decades. The advent of plastic surgery as a lifestyle choice is a contemporary phenomenon, but concerns with health, beauty and body image were shown to go way back, in books and magazines from The Dress Review in 1903 to Marie Claire in 2003.
In addition to the historic material on display, there were newly commissioned artworks made in collaboration with women living and working in East London, reflecting their values and aspirations. The Women's Library worked with HEBA, a skills and training agency for women based in Brick Lane, Magic Me, an east-London based arts organisation and students from London Metropolitan University to produce an exhibition that kept growing as visitors interacted, added their views and responses and told the world what women want today.
In addition to the exhibition, a programme of events covered a breadth of issues, and included talks and debates, creative writing and reading courses, a guided walk on pioneering women in east London, and a film season of rarely-screened feminist films. You can also visit the What Women Want website, built by London Metropolitan University students, to find out more!
More information
- Press room
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