Snatches: Moments from 100 Years of Women's Lives E-Book

Various

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A young actress meets a powerful film producer in his hotel suite. A revolutionary leads an attack on a colonial club in India. A bereaved mother defends herself against charges of infanticide. Snatches: Moments from 100 Years of Women's Lives documents, remembers and bears witness to a century of struggle for progress and equality for women in the United Kingdom. Moving, funny, tragic and empowering, these eight monologues address the constant efforts of women to carve out their rights both in domestic and public spheres – from the criminalisation of marital rape to the first Reclaim the Night march – proclaiming a history of perseverance and resilience shown by women's rights activists in this country. Curated by Royal Court Artistic Director, Vicky Featherstone, the monologues for Snatches were commissioned to mark the centenary of women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. They were broadcast on BBC Four in 2018, directed by Vanessa Caswill, Vicky Featherstone and Rachna Suri, and starring Jodie Comer, Siobhan Finneran, Romola Garai, Shirley Henderson, Liv Hill, Corinne Skinner-Carter, Kiran Sonia Sawar and Antonia Thomas.

Leseprobe

SNATCHES

Moments from 100 Years ofWomen’s Lives

curated byVicky Featherstone

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Introduction by Vicky Featherstone

Chronological Overview

Pig Life by E V Crowe

Tipping Point by Rachel De-lahay

Pritilata by Tanika Gupta

Multiples by Zinnie Harris

Outside by Theresa Ikoko

Reclaim the Night by Charlene James

Bovril Pam by Vicky Jones

Compliance by Abi Morgan

Production Credits

Author Biographies

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

IntroductionVicky Featherstone

When I was asked to curate this project I gathered together a group of playwrights of different experience and background and set them the challenge… a fifteen-minute monologue for BBC Four to commemorate the Representation of the People’s Act in 1918.

I am ambivalent about anniversaries. As a culture, Britain is deeply nostalgic and seemingly obsessed with holding on to our glorious past and finding national moments and even monuments to commemorate it. That’s fine if the history has a positive effect on the behaviours of now, and more importantly is truly representative and truthful of our past – and we do need to find better ways for the histories we are told to be the ones we need to hear. Which is why I thought this was important. And that the commissioning of them by BBC Four was inspiring.

Researcher Sam Brown created a timeline of significant social, cultural, political and legislative moments relating to women’s history over the last one hundred years in Britain. We watched documentaries and interviews and considered the way forward.

What struck us immediately was how slow progress has actually been and how far we still have to go to achieve anything close to old-school male/female gender equality – and that is before you bring anything progressive or intersectional into the mix.

The writers were angry and fired up.

Rape in marriage was legal until 1991?

1918 and only women over the age of thirty who owned their own home got the vote and that is what we are celebrating?

A woman was wrongly imprisoned for infanticide over the manipulation of the statistics around the likelihood of cot death occurring three times with the same parents?

Women were kept under curfew in their own homes to protect them from the Yorkshire Ripper?

I could go on.

What follows are the writers’ ingenious, bold, emotional, funny and angry responses to the place we still find ourselves in 2018. They are in no way conclusive or comprehensive of all experiences. They are merely a gesture, an offering, maybe a small beginning of something, they are snatches of extraordinary experiences lived by ordinary women.

The overall project was, of course, not just about these short monologues as you read them here, but the creation of a body of work for screening in June 2018 as the centrepiece of a season of work by and about women called ‘Hear Her’.

A huge part of the ambition and scale of the films is down to the two brilliant directors who joined us on the journey: Vanessa Caswill and Rachna Suri. They were ruthlessly ambitious for these voices and were rigorous in trying to create as thrilling an aesthetic and as entertaining a world as possible for these stories to be told. And the wonderful actors too (cast by the indomitable Amy Ball at the Royal Court), who took this on as a leap of faith, giving the most detailed and thoughtful and powerful performances to bring these women to life. Debbie Christie and I set ourselves the task of having an all-female team – Cinematographer Vanessa Whyte, Design Alison Butler, Costume Jemima Cotter and with all production, crew, design and post we largely managed it. It really did take a village of brave, bold and ambitious women to bring these to life. Thank you to all of them.

One day we won’t need a week in June. This work will not need to be commented on, given special commissioning budgets, one day we will have reached a Tipping Point. And equality will be normal. I have to believe that.

Until then we will keep curating these projects, writing plays and creating environments where we can feel safe, celebrated and own our own history.

At our first meeting about the project, Tanika Gupta talked of asking a group of women in Argentina on a Royal Court international residency in early 2018 what their equivalent of the Me Too movement was called, and without hesitation one replied – ‘We are the granddaughters of the witches you burnt.’

These Snatches are for those Witches.

Chronological Overview

1918 Representation of the People Act 1918 – women over 30 get the vote.

Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 was passed, allowing women to be elected into Parliament.

Constance Markiewicz becomes the first woman elected to Westminster, representing Sinn Féin.

‘Lift girls’, who control the lifts in government office buildings, threaten to strike over equal pay. They are paid 29 shillings a week, compared to 59 shillings for the men who had filled the role before the war.

1919 Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons.

1920s

1920 The Sex Discrimination Removal Act allows women access to teaching, the legal profession and accountancy. The act should, in theory, have meant greater equality for women entering work, but in the 1920s, working women were frowned upon as there were so many men on the dole. The authorities used ‘marriage bars’ to prevent married women working as teachers. This rule meant that if a woman teacher married, she had to resign from her job; if she was already married, she was sacked.

Hull Laundry Strike. In November 1919, the Laundries Trade Board established a guaranteed minimum wage of 28 shillings for a 48-hour week. By mid-1920, laundresses in Hull were still on the minimum rate, while workers in other towns were earning more.

On June 26, the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) called its laundry members out on strike. The Hull Trades Council supported the strike and on July 17 helped to organise a parade through the town accompanied by local bands. Many smaller laundries managed to keep open despite the strike and the NFWW was outraged to find strike-breakers being smuggled in in laundry baskets.

First female jurors sworn in at Bristol Quarter Sessions. The jurors heard evidence in the case against William Henry Ayton, accused of stealing parcels at Weston-Super-Mare station. The prosecuting counsel remarked that he was the first to use the words ‘ladies and gentlemen of the jury’ in an English court.

1921 Unemployment benefits are extended to include allowances for wives.

An amendment is proposed to the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act to make lesbianism an act of ‘gross indecency’, with the same punishments meted out to gay men. The proposal is defeated, because it was believed that few women could even comprehend that such acts existed and accepting the proposal would only draw attention to such acts and therefore open them up to a new ‘audience’.

Women’s football banned.

1922 The Law of Property Act allows both husband and wife to inherit property equally.

Rhondda Education Authority got rid of 63 married women teachers. The teachers took the authority to court, but they lost their case. Some women found a way around the marriage bars by marrying in secret and then living apart from their husband, or by having a very long engagement.

1923 The Matrimonial Causes Act makes grounds for divorce the same for women and men. This meant that women could also appeal for divorce on the sole basis of adultery; previously only men could make this claim.

1924 A young Lloyds bank clerk successfully conceals her marriage for a whole year. Her employer eventually finds out and dismisses her. The marriage bar had been introduced in selected occupations during the interwar years due to the economic depression and high male unemployment (although it had existed in some industries for decades – Royal Mail introduced theirs in 1876). It was justified in part by the belief that a woman would not be able to combine work and domestic life, even though historically working-class women had always had to do so to support their families. The marriage bar was gradually lifted in the UK from 1944 onwards. However, the idea that women would not be able to give a job their full attention because of demands in the home still prevailed, as did the exclusion of women from many trades and industries. The Lloyds marriage bar was eventually lifted in 1949.

1928 Women receive vote on same terms of men with the Representation of the People Act 1928.

1929 First General Election where women have equal voting rights – hailed as the Flapper’s election.

Women become ‘persons’ in their own right, by order of the Privy Council.

1930s

In some ways, women faced the brunt of economic hardship during the depression of the 1930s. Mass unemployment was widespread and, in most cases, the man was the sole breadwinner. Women were forced to ‘make ends meet’ either by maintaining the home on a limited budget or, if they were fortunate, by seeking (often poorly paid) employment in domestic service or in retail as shop assistants.

1931 Women first wear trouser suits in public.

1932 In line with the teaching profession and the civil service, the BBC introduces a marriage bar, and no longer employs married women, except under exceptional circumstances. This stems what had been an enlightened attitude towards married women at the organisation.

1935 The marriage bar is lifted for teachers and medical staff in London.

1938 Dr Alex Bourne deliberately challenged the law to clarify what constituted legal practice in relation to abortions. He performed an abortion on a fourteen-yearold rape victim, though her life was not in danger. The doctor won and the ‘Bourne Judgement’ opened the way for other doctors to interpret the law more flexibly.

1940s

1941 The National Service Act is passed introducing conscription for women. All unmarried women between the ages of 20 and 30 are called up for war work. It is later extended to include women up to the age of 43 and married women, though pregnant women and those with young children were exempt.

1942 The TUC pledges itself to equal pay, which was first debated in 1888.

1944 Education Act makes secondary education free, raises school leaving age to 15 and outlaws the marriage bar for teachers.

1945 By the end of the war there were 460,000 women in the military and over 6.5 million in civilian war work. During the war 90% of single women and 80% of married women were working in factories or on the land.

The Family Allowance Act began a state system of child benefits to be paid directly to mothers, ending a thirty-year campaign, which was begun by Eleanor Rathbone in 1917. (She wanted to ensure that money went into the family purse, not just to the local publican, as some men would have it.)

‘G.I. Brides’ rush police at a protest meeting in Westminster. ‘The women, some of them carrying babies, came from all parts of the country and had started queuing up from one o’clock for the meeting held to protest against the delay in obtaining transport for them to join their husbands.’ 70,000 British women eventually crossed the Atlantic to be reunited with the American servicemen they had married during WWII.

1947 Cambridge University is the last university to agree to award full degrees to women.

1948 The introduction of the National Health Service (NHS) gives everyone free access to health care. Previously, only the insured – usually men – benefited.

1950s

1955 Equal pay agreed for teachers, civil servants and local government officers.

1956 Legal reforms say that women teachers and civil servants should receive equal pay.