Now If I Could, I would Join the Sister Hood

Title: Sisterhood 

About:

Sisterhood has been designed with the appearance of being 'unfinished & rough around the edges'. Although women have since won the right to vote, with thanks to the Suffragettes, there is still so much work to be done in terms of gender equality, women's rights & empowerment of women & girls. This hand drawn quote is taken from Mary Duggan's poem: The Scullery Maid’s Monologue: A Woman's Worth.

It will take 108 years to close the gender gap. At the current rate of progress, it will take another 108 years to reach gender parity, according to the World Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap report. Across the 106 countries covered since the first edition of the report, the biggest gaps to close are in the economic and political empowerment dimensions, which will take 202 and 107 years to close, respectively.  - Worldeconomicforum.org 2018.

Designed using Procreate App for iPad & Apple Pencil. 

Colourful modern typography wall art | Giclée Print | Hand lettering design

Exclusively produced for the Enfield Enjoys Festival 

 

Mock up Image Credit

----

Price: £80 

A2 format

The Scullery Maid’s Monologue: A Woman's Worth

(* The Recorder 1914)

     I heard the master say in his ‘La-di-dah’ voice

     “Nowhere’s safe from this purple, white

     and green brigade who demand their equality!”

     As he read out loud how

     a rowdy crowd caused a lively scene

     at Palmers Green.

                               

     When men threw flour and eggs

     at them Suffragette’s!* And how that Mr. Goulden

     and a Mr.Prout were roughed up

     and routed out...Chased by lads on bicycles

     from ‘The Triangle’ right down to

     The Fox taverns’ tram!

                       

      And Gawd bless us if a woman wasn’t manhandled

      and her pamphlet torn up too!Then

      the mistress gives the master

      an awful earful at how the meek wife

      and Suffragist mother

      are forced to crime

 

      because Asquith’s government who refuse

      women the vote! She says his nibs

      “ ...must not come home

      until you’ve spoken out in Parliament!”

      And being the progressive lady

      says how she differs from the late queen

 

       who thought all suffragette’s were

       hateful heathens who’d perish without

       a man’s protectiveness. That 1914

       is the modern age where women

       will prove their effectiveness

       against the tyranny attitude

                             

       that politics is a male preserve

       and domesticity deservedly feminine -

       though all agreed that in society

       a woman’s worth only improves

       when men go to the battlefield!

 

        Then she tells of brave Mrs. Mary Clarke.

        Youngest of that Pankhurst family

        who, force fed, ‘up an’ died the week she was

        freed from Holloway. And rests now

        poor ducks,  in our Southgate cemetery!

                           

        “Why only last year,” The mistress says,

         “Young Emily Davison was force fed,

         forty nine times!” - Forty nine times

         before she threw herself under the king’s horse!

         And now this talk that the fighting men

                            

         will get the vote but we women won’t !

         Now if I could, I would join the ‘sisterhood’

         but war needs me loyalty.

         So I’ll build me scrub muscles up -

         Ready to fight like Boudicca in deeds

         not words for this female plight

                          

         and listen to Cook’s good advice:

         To teach our boys better -

         To change the law’s letter

         And one day, have our say. 

         Hear that swish and sway of skirt

         all the way to Parliament

                                                               MTDuggan