100 Years of Conversation – Lyrics
Conversations tend to repeat.
New roads walked by different feet.
Long time arguments on a new street
but we still get lost and we still can’t see
how we still keep talking ‘bout the same old things—
asking who’s the right kind of woman.
Looking at who gets left behind.
Are you the right or wrong kind of woman?
Are you a rich or white kind of woman?
Are you educated, academic, married or a mother,
are you a valid kind of woman? Are you a real kind of woman?
We’ve always had different types.
Good and bad, dark and light, virgin woman, mother woman, whore woman,
all strands of the same thread dancing in the wind—
all at risk from scissors though. All at risk of being broke.
Are you a woman worthy of a vote?
These days, you have to be
18 or over with a permanent address,
have a clear residency status:
no immigration trouble or citizenship mess.
Healthy enough and wealthy enough to
go make your way to a ballot box;
not if you’re a woman in a refuge though
and not if you’re a woman in prison.
It isn’t necessarily written into the law that these women can’t vote,
but if these things apply
there’s no way you’re able to easily cast your YES or NO.
But tick the right boxes above
and you can tick a box in an election booth
because you are a valid woman, the state says.
You matter and you count, the state says.
You are the right kind of woman who’s allowed to go and vote—
that’s most of us, you know. At least today it is.
But it wasn’t always.
Look back. Crawl back into the past 100 years past and ask yourself:
Would you have been the right kind of woman back then?
Would you have been amongst the first batch of women to vote after the men?
Would you have been written into 1918 law
or would you be a footnote in the future about the kind of women left behind?
Would you have been a woman who was worthy of a vote?
I’m not sure. Let’s go.
Those days, you had to be
over 30 with a permanent home that you or your husband owned,
a house that was worth a decent amount.
Healthy enough, wealthy enough to
go make your way to a ballot box;
not if you were a woman who wasn’t white though,
and not if you’re a woman who was uneducated or poor.
It wasn’t written into law that these women couldn’t vote,
but if those things applied
there was no way you’d be able to easily cast your YES or NO.
Conversations tend to repeat.
New roads walked by different feet.
Long time arguments on a new street
but we still get lost and we still can’t see
how we still keep talking ‘bout the same old things—
asking who’s the right kind of woman.
Looking at who gets left behind.
Would you have been a woman who was worthy of a vote?
1 in 3 were left behind. That means she could vote, and you, but not me.
These days we are eager to look back.
Searching amongst the suffragettes for women who look like us,
Five or six Indian women marching in 1911
is all the photographic evidence we have.
So desperate for representation we lean upon the aristocracy,
literal princesses who fought for the vote held up as diversity.
But the racism and classism in the movement
isn’t easily glossed over for me.
Elite women of colour are still elite.
The working women were fighting too, though,
but they weren’t in the famous photos, they weren’t as often in the news,
Christabel Pankhurst said the working women’s movement had no value:
“they are the weakest portion of the sex” she said,
“their lives were too hard, their education to meagre
to equip them for the contest”.
Christabel thought the race was between women and men, but it wasn’t.
It was between those who wanted change for themselves, like her,
and those who wanted change for everyone, like them;
the so-called ‘weaker’ working women who
left the suffrage organisations in droves.
Adelaide Knight, wife of a mixed-race sailor’s son,
she left the WSPU because
she said they had no interest in the working class women she knew.
And she was right.
Although where have we heard that more recently?
Today, working women are still saying the same things,
care about us they say, austerity is a feminist issue too.
Voting is important, sure, but make the links.
Fight with us so our lives are easier
and then we’ll find it easier to stand with you
for more women in parliament or CEO execs.
Right now we’re just trying to survive
so forgive the fact we’re not always at the forefront
of feminist political parties and girlboss recruitment drives.
It was harder for working class women in 1918
and it certainly still is today.
Voting rights and feminism and the role of working class women—
it’s all part of the same fight.
Do you want change for yourself,
or change for you and everyone else?
Conversations tend to repeat.
New roads walked by different feet.
Long time arguments on a new street
but we still get lost and we still can’t see
how we still keep talking ‘bout the same old things—
asking who’s the right kind of woman.
Looking at who gets left behind.
Women are all worthy of the vote.
Queuing up outside the ballot box at the crack of dawn, or
hating what is essentially a two-party system so choosing to stay at home—
we all should have the right to cast or not cast our own YES’s or NO’s,
whether we do or we don’t.