100 Years of Breaking Taboos
- By Catriona Dickie
- •
- 28 Feb, 2018
- •
How the Suffragettes paved the way for activism
2018 marks the
100-year anniversary of votes for some
women in the UK. Although this may be problematic in
itself, there is still plenty to celebrate.
If you're reading this, you probably already know that at No More Taboo, we stand for empowerment, fairness, equality, breaking boundaries and starting dialogues surrounding menstruation and period poverty. Periods may not quite ready to break through fully into the mainstream, with the brilliant Bollywood comedy Padman being shown at tiny cinemas only and menstrual cups still banished to the lower echelons of drugstore shelves. But menstruation is gaining traction in the media, and its no longer only women and people who menstruate who are taking notice.
This year and last we have celebrated national period-related milestones such as Scotland becoming the first country in the world to provide free sanitary products to low-income women, Bodyform finally using imitation blood in their adverts instead of a mysterious blue liquid, and marathon runner free-bleeding her way to the finish line. Slowly, widespread attitudes are changing towards menstruation and it's easy to get wrapped up in the here and now and to forget about the women who have paved the way for us. So let's take this opportunity to pay tribute to our grandmothers, great-grandmothers and great-great grandmothers: the Suffragettes.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past month, you'll be aware that back in 1900, a group of disruptive, powerful and forceful women decided to start a feminist revolution. The Daily Mail dubbed them Suffragettes in a futile attempt to belittle the activists with a patronising suffix. After quickly taking ownership of their nomenclature, the Suffragettes began to tackle the matter at hand: votes for women.
Despite enduring
imprisonment, force feeding and institutionalised misogyny, Sylvia
Pankhurst along with a delegation of women lobbied tirelessly for the
vote that they knew they were entitled to. In 1918, some women - those aged over thirty who owned property - were finally granted the right. Bureaucracy moved even more slowly then than it does now, and it was not
until ten years later that all women were awarded equal voting rights to
men.
The representation of the people act was a great victory for women of the time; it formed the first pillar of equality. What was once dismissed as nothing more than a Utopian ideal became a reality, and that was down to the will and determination of hundreds of unnamed women. Those women, the Suffragettes, fought so that in 2018 our voices would be heard.
WOW Women of the World festivals have been popping up across the world, if you get the chance to go along to one we would strongly recommend it.
WOW – Women of the World festival celebrates women and girls, and looks at the obstacles that stop them from achieving their potential.
Around the world, individuals and communities are insisting on the simple proposition that women and girls must have equal rights and asking the question: why is gender equality taking so long?
Southbank Centre's WOW – Women of the World festival is a global network of festivals which provides a platform for celebrating what has been achieved, and exploring all the ways we can change the world for the better.
What’s not to love?
Our Founder, Chloe, and her Mum Angela went along to represent No More Taboo with a stall across the two days. Here’s her highlights:
“Although we didn’t get much time to take in all the discussions as we were kept busy wo-manning the stall (thanks Mum for helping out)! We had some great discussions around gender, equality, inclusivity and of course periods with new customers, supporters, other panellists and some old friends who came to see us.
In fact, we were really pleased to catch up with Plan International UK who were opening the festival with a discussion about Period Activism exactly one year on since the launch of our #BreaktheBarriers research and Period Poverty Conference that we ran in collaboration with Plan.
On the first weekend of September, No More Taboo set up shop at Lush Cribbs Causeway for their Charity Pot weekend.
The Lush Charity Pot is a wonderfully creamy shea-butter hand lotion where all the sales money (excluding VAT) goes towards a chosen charity or non-for-profit. This scheme is designed to help boost grass-roots, small and local organisations, like ourselves, financially so that we can continue to do the work we do such as our Tackling Period Poverty programme.
As we were Lush’s chosen organisation for the weekend of the 1-2 September, one of our volunteers, Iloni, and one of our advisors, Carolyn, went along to wo-man the (suitably Lush-styled aesthetic) stall that Lush had kindly provided for us. We took along a range of our products, stacks of leaflets and information as well as our enthusiasm for talking about all things to do with periods.
Over the weekend, we sold over £200’s worth of stock with Ruby Cups and Honour Your Flow re-usable pads proving most popular with Lush customers. On top of this, Lush sold so many of their Charity Pots that £340.60 was raised for No More Taboo – which was amazing!
However exciting the money side of things were with this event, what I personally took away as being the real highlight of the weekend was the number and nature of conversations we shared with customers.
Mothers and daughters came and chatted to us about how they agreed it was so important to use re-usable products for personal and financial reasons as well as for the planet’s sake. Boyfriends accompanied their other halves as they prodded and probed the range of menstrual cups on display. Older women commented on how it’s such a relief to be able to talk about menstruation in public and with people you’ve only just met. They regaled of a time when periods were even more hush-hush and celebrated with us out mission of there being No More Taboo.
We would like to thank Lush Cribbs Causeway for being such wonderful hosts, encouraging every customer that came through their doors to consider buying the Charity Pot or simply to chat with us. Each member of their staff team was incredibly warm and so keen to find out more about what we do. On behalf of all of us at No More Taboo, thank you.
For more information, take a look at their website: https://www1.uwe.ac.uk/whatson/biggreenweek.aspx
Read more here: https://www.wen.org.uk/environmenstrual-week-of-action/
