Feminism and gorillas - What do they have in common?

Feminism.

The dictionary definition for Feminism is;

> The doctrine advocating social, political and all other rights of women equal to those of men.

> An organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.

Remember all of that ‘Votes for women’ stuff that you had to learn about in history lessons in school? Yeah, that was an act of feminism.

To put it simply, feminism is women protesting about unequal rights to men, for example in some jobs, men get paid more then women for the exact same job. The job could be making tea for the boss and clearing up paper, a man would get paid £4.10 an hour for said job whilst a woman would get something like £3.90 for a job.

One major example of feminism is the Guerrilla Girls. They are a feminist group that attend tours and actively protest against the lack of female artists, writers, photographers etc. that are noticed. They go by the names of dead female creatives [writers, photographers, etc] such as Alma Thomas, Rosalba Carriera and Lee Krasner. They never reveal their true identity and they wear gorilla masks to hide their faces. Below is an image created by the Guerilla girls, created to bring out the sexism that happens when it comes to art in museums and galleries. It brings out a strong message, showing true facts of the time.

On their website, the guerrilla girl that goes by the name of Kathe Kollwitz explains how the group was created.

‘In 1985, The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an exhibition titled ‘An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture’. It was supposed to be an up-to-the minute summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world.

Out of 169 artists, only 13 were women. All the artists were white, either from Europe or the US.

That was bad enough, but the curator, Kynaston McShine, said ‘any artist who wasn't in the show should rethink “his” career’. And that really annoyed a lot of artists because obviously the guy was completely prejudiced. Women demonstrated in front of the museum with the usual placards and picket line. Some of us who attended were irritated that we didn't make any impression on passersby.’

(Information is an extract from their book ‘Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls’ which was released in 1995)

To this day, the guerrilla girls still protest against prejudice acts against women creationists and have been to almost every continent in the USA.

Sources used - Oxford English Dictionary

> Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls.