Catalogue Number
NMLH.2023.87.1
Object Name
Poster
Title
Equal toil unequal place: women and feudalism
Date
1985
Description
The Poster Collective was a collective formed in 1971 at the Slade School of Art,  a group formed to initially produce posters in response to the miners strike and on the wars in both Vietnam and Ireland. It was formed on the basis of developing a coherent visual style, which addressed the political issues of the time. This included the armed struggles against colonialism in Africa, the struggle of women for equal rights and the continuing struggle against racism. The collective was active in the 70's and 80's, producing posters on a wide range of issues, including for educational purposes. The group was not-for-profit and used a variety of hand-printing techniques to create their posters. Between Future and Past
A set of posters looking at the ideological and economic structures underlying the unequal position of women in society at different junctures in history from feudalism to present. It also shows points at which women have fought to change existing social relations. This is the first poster in the set and is titled 'Equal toil and unequal place: women and feudalism' and has purple text on a yellow background. The background also features illustrations of labourers, with a speech bubble reading: "We're meant to be inferior but look at the amount of work we do." Main text on the poster reads: "The church justified the social inequalities in feudalism with the idea that the landowner was the peasant's master on earth, just as God was his spirtitual master. Women were said to be 'evil' and 'inferior' and 'by nature subject to men'. This gave rise to the common mview that a man is nothing if he is noit his wife's master. Religious stories like Adam and Eve were used to claim that women were
'gateways to the devil'... Feudal society was based mainly on agriculture and did not know the separation between the home as a private place and the 'outside world' as the 'place of work'. The household was a productive unit in which everyone contributed to its economy. Women brewed, spun, worked in the dairly and the fieleds, made clothes and food, chilminded and acted as midwives and healers for the community. Like their male counterparts, peasant women were exploited by the land owning class, but they also had to bear the brunt of the church's anti-women views (misogyny) and common practices like wife beating." At the bottom of the poster are two illustrations of women working in a spinning and metalworking factories.
