By Helen Taylor
I moved to Bristol in 1972, and soon met a group of wonderful women who were learning about and trying to live feminism. Sisterhood was the term we all used, and committed to proudly, as we tried to support one another and all women – through pregnancy testing, fights against challenges to abortion, contraception, family allowances etc. I was good at going on marches, but not at doing the necessary writing of letters and papers to politicians, local councillors etc. My sisters were great at that, and set up women’s centres, a safe house for abused women, a University nursery, and other campaigns.
What I did was to make tape-slide and video presentations about those campaigns.
I was working at the time at Bristol Polytechnic, and I organised an all-woman show called SISTERSHOW. The Polytechnic gave us a theatre in the Art College for two nights; we had a small budget to pay for a bus to bring audiences in; we wrote and produced the event collectively; and creative and brilliant women did sketches, made posters, sang and danced throughout the evening. Most notably we had a poster in which our two stars, Pat van Twest and Jackie Thrupp (now sadly no longer with us), were photographed under one huge hat. We also had a communal bedsheet in which we all dressed and danced on College Green in the centre of Bristol.
My happiest memories are the consciousness raising group in which eight or nine of us shared experiences and learned about other women’s lives; the parties at which we danced to David Bowie records; and watching my sisters have their first babies and come in and out of relationships.
Nine of us got together to write the first Women’s Studies textbook, Half The Sky: An Introduction to Women’s Studies, published by Virago, which was widely used and is still relevant in many ways. Getting hold of printed material to teach feminism was a problem, and this was our attempt to provide it.
Those were the greatest of times, and it seems life has gone downhill ever since. I regret the fact that no one ever speaks today about the six demands of the WLM – basic things like equal pay (still unrealised), equal opportunities (very patchy indeed), 24-hour child care (ha!) etc etc. We had the right ideas and considerable energy, but we didn’t realise how resilient patriarchal attitudes and institutions can and would continue to be.
Helen Taylor has just published a memoir/cultural study, Childless by Choice: The Meaning and Legacy of a Childfree Life, which gives a great deal of information about the early days of the Second Wave WLM and her participation in it.
She is also the author of Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our LIves (2019)