Intermission: Pay and Personalities II

Notions that women have won all the rights we need, or that women ‘have it all’ with nothing to fight for, find voice amongst some women, some time, throughout the history and herstory of the equal rights and equal pay struggle. Simultaneously, the pessimistic view intrudes when demands are only partly met – ‘though women’s hope has been for winning all in full, so partial achievement is seen as a loss. Sometimes, gains are expressed as individual women’s achievements, named in eulogies and histories, biographies and biopics. Occasionally, a statue is erected to celebrate a woman and her achievements, gained through her commitment, her energy, her intelligence, and her wit. Such efforts at saving individual women from the obscurity to which millions of the strong and achieving have been condemned, can obscure the reality of women’s collective spirit and practice. Ironically, so honoured, those of honour would acknowledge this if here to do so. Ironically, too, this prominence-in-statuary has become a goal for some, in seeking to elevate women into the street-furniture space occupied by notable (sometimes noteworthy) men. Yet individual women, however dedicated and hardworking, imaginative and inspiring, do not do it alone. The women named in the equal pay campaign are rightly honoured, yet so too are those in the role of the ‘backroom boy’. These intrepid workers behind the scenes, supporting and encouraging, exercising administrative and marching power to match the stamina of the front runners, the women in the frontlines leading, banners unfurled. As a women’s history, a history of women, equal pay is incomplete without naming names, those known and the less prominent, those hidden from public view, their names obscure and obscured. Digging into the diaries and letters, the notes and the notebooks, the reminiscences and the memories too often fading – to be caught before they go, before forgotten – this does matter. The hands that push us all forward, pressing us on. The strength of the arms that sooth and support in propelling us further into the fight and the light. Crossing class boundaries, all the lines that could divide, but don’t – status, ethnicity and race, age and agelessness, and youth. All individuals, bound together in the struggle. All personalities bolstering one another. All in this fight, standing unique yet collective in the triumph of working in concert, combined in agreement, sometimes furious in disagreement, embracing disputatiously yet reciprocally the political affray of the equal pay struggle.