Women's Rights and Text

British writer, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) believed in giving women access to education and spent her life advocating for social equality. Wollstonecraft's seminal A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published in 1792 and is still considered a feminist classic today. 

This wooden writing board, carved by author and nutritionist Elma Stuart (1837-1903), was gifted to Mary Ann Evans in 1872. Better known as George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880) went on to write literary classic Middlemarch, using a pen name to disguise her gender. 

Radical British liberal politician, Jane Cobden (1851-1947), daughter of Victorian reformer Richard Cobden, organised an Indian womens' group within the Women’s Coronation Procession of 1911 in London, to show the strength of the movement across the British Empire. 

British fashion designer Katharine Hamnett (1947-) is best known for her protest slogan t-shirts. Hamnett made headlines in 1984 by wearing her own 58% don’t want pershing t-shirt to meet Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in protest of US nuclear weapons proliferating in the UK.

Self-taught British fashion designer, Vivienne Westwood (1941-), is celebrated for bringing the anti-establishmentarian sentiments of punk to fashion design. Westwood is pictured in one of her own slogan t-shirt designs, championing climate change causes.

American artist Jenny Holzer (1950-) uses text to create large scale projections in public spaces. Holzer’s practice is rooted in feminist thought, challenging social norms with bold statements. In 1990, she was the first woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale.