Hooliganism and heroism – women’s political participation, Pankhurst and Pussy Riot

Emmeline Pankhurst said in 1913, “You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else … if you are really going to get your reform realized.” 

Suffragettes and feminist punks

Russian punk band Pussy Riot have taken up this battle cry – as have many other women human rights defenders worldwide – often at great personal cost. Last week Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a penal colony.  Their conviction, on charges of hooliganism (a term that Emmeline Pankhurst proudly claimed for herself: “I am what you might call a hooligan”) resulted from their peaceful protest directed at the Russian Orthodox Church leader’s support for Mr Putin.  The song mentions a loss of women’s rights, and implores the Virgin Mary to become a feminist.

For me, there are striking parallels with the suffragette movement’s strategy of civil disobedience. Women chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, started fires, disrupted formal political meetings and were sent to prison.  These women took direct action, prepared to go to jail for the right to vote and to continue their resistance once there through hunger strikes.  Every woman in the UK owes something to their sacrifices.

More than noise

One of Womankind’s core aims is to increase women’s political participation and our partners around the world work to achieve this – in their communities, in local, national and international politics.  Traditionally the development sector has supported such participation through training for potential women candidates, supporting legal literacy, lobbying governments to create quotas for women’s participation and educating girls on political systems.  All of which are positive and effective means of enabling women to shape the public spaces and systems that frame their societies.

Our history and the current storm around Pussy Riot confirm the critical role which women can and must play within civil and political spaces – in pursuit of women’s rights and a broader set of human rights.  Both also raise the question as to whether we as development practitioners need to be more courageous in how we frame civil and political participation, and in what we support or fund.

Answering courage

Controversy and backlash have always accompanied women’s attempts to occupy public and political spaces. Very few political acts by women worldwide have achieved the profile and response of Pussy Riot’s one minute protest song, yet how action of this type could be supported through mainstream development routes is far from clear. A wider understanding of women’s political participation is needed to direct funding, publicity and support to those creating change at all levels.

We owe it to women’s rights activists around the world to ensure that we continue to challenge ourselves, to evolve, to be prepared to take risks and to support the ever changing and creative forms of challenge, protest and change. We must also provide the support needed by individual women’s human rights defenders who pay the price and live the backlash for their daily courage and determination. Courage which we know from both historical and current examples will be critical to achieving the changes we wish to see and a fairer future for women.

As the suffragette slogan demands, sometimes ‘deeds not words’ are needed, and deserve our support.

Amnesty International are collecting messages of support for the band.

Post by Rachel Carter