The Invisible Feminists

Abstract

At what point do women come to the realisation that they are ageing? Is it incremental and driven by their vanity when they see grey hairs and wobbly flesh? Or is it hammered into them by a society that is discriminatory, particularly about ageing? This paper will position how ageist treatment of women is prejudiced, damaging for their self-esteem and happiness and I hypothesise that feminist activist art can play a role in ameliorating ageism. Ageism against women takes many forms for example: the pressure older women are under to stay young, their lack of representation in the media, feminist theory and art galleries all of which ensures their invisibility. Investigating feminist gerontological research provides a theoretical perspective on women’s experience of ageing which demonstrates the veracity of the problem. I discuss how historically feminist activist art had been an effective tool to make visible the inequities suffered by women and I provide examples and analysis of these art works. I conjecture that todays craftivist practice is well placed to illuminate the problems faced by ageing women. I demonstrate this with an analysis of artists, myself included who employ an art craftivist (craft + activism) practice.