Poster - Private Morals, Public Order: The Beginnings of the Modern State (Women's History Series: 5)

Category: Family; Feminist Activism; Feminist Archive North; History; Politics and Policy; Poster; Work and Employment
Date: Thursday 19 September 2013

Tags: 1800's; 1980's; Artwork; Class; Domestic Work; Equality; Femininity; Housework; Marriage; Motherhood; Nuclear Family; Stereotypes; The Personal is Political; Trade Unions; Victorians; Welfare; Women's History Poster Series; Women's Liberation Movement; Working-class

By the Poster-Film Collective, 1983. Part of a series of posters on Women's History.

This poster briefly describes the poor living conditions of the Victorian working-class and explores the way in which the living conditions of this group were shaped by wealthy 'philanthropists' and the State into the nuclear family unit. Women's unpaid work was exploited and regulated, therefore imposing stricter gender expectations regarding motherhood and marriage. Women lacked representation within existing working-class politics, as indicated by the quote in the bottom right corner from Henry Broadhurst at the TUC in 1875.

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To find out more about the Poster-Film Collective, click here.

Source: Feminist Archive North