writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

inaugurated with the European City of Culture. However, little has been done to address the
gendering of the city, where women’s histories (of their contributions in the world of work in building
the Second City or their contributions to culture in other forms) have been historically erased or
subjugated under a calcified masculinised archetypes.
It has been of vital and ongoing importance for Glasgow Women’s Library to excavate women’s
lives and histories from the monolithic mythologies of the city and to aim to cultivate more diverse
creative and cultural contributions in contemporary life. 5 The library has undertaken many significant
pieces of ground breaking work that illustrate this approach 6 however, I will mention just one by way
of illustration. The Women Make History Group was launched in 2006 with an aim of providing a
locus at GWL for women to become involved in women’s history. The group has developed different
strands of activity but has typically involved collaboration, research and team working between
women from across the spectrum of educational experiences from women historians and academics
to women who are developing their literacy and who have had no experience of research or using
cultural institutions. From an early idea to create a woman’s heritage walk in Glasgow the group has
created 6 tours which they lead as guides, created and distributed thousands of free maps, recorded
and made available downloadable audio walks (now being produced in other languages). 7
In 2012 Glasgow Women’s Library launched a new project, Badges of Honour that again fused the
themes of Active Citizenship and Living Histories. The title flagged up our aim at the outset, to see
badges, amongst the least valuable, least valued objects in a museum as both worthy of honour in
themselves and being objects that were symbolic of the honour deserving of women who wear or
have worn them. The Library’s collection team aimed through this project to collect valuable
information that would yield further context to their existing large collection of badges, spanning
suffragette brooches to contemporary campaigning badges associated with women’s involvement in
the current debates around Scottish independence. The collection comprises Scottish, British,
European and some wider international examples, too diverse in their subject matter to summarise
but including significant clusters on the subjects of violence against women, sexuality especially
lesbian and LGBT campaigns, feminist topics including wages for housework and violence against
women, CND and peace campaigning and other equalities topics. A further project aim was to use
the ubiquity of badges, owned by huge numbers of women across all backgrounds to open up
discussions with the widest numbers of potential participants about the importance of collecting
women’s histories. We had noted how badges could be used effectively to perform the critical role of
enabling an accessible route for us to make the idea of a women’s library, archive and museum
meaningful to women. Badges are amongst the most popular items in our museum collection and
using them as illustrations of artefacts of significance (and which many women might have in their
own homes) and as a starting point for discussions about why we collect, what objects can tell us
about people’s lives and histories and why we might save and conserve such items leading to further
learning and engagement with the library and its programmes.
Women have historically been active in groundbreaking and significant projects, campaigns and
episodes in Scottish history. 8 However, most of their work has been routinely overlooked and, or
they have been reticent to claim their contribution to Scottish culture. With Badges of Honour we
were aiming to unpack stories of active citizenship and living histories with women who might not
have been ordinarily tempted to come and discuss their achievements with us but were happy to
come to share their memories of badge wearing.
The Library team used a snowball approach to find women who would bring and share their
badges, to donate them or help us add context to our existing collection. We sought out women from
and beyond our networks who we knew had been involved in political, equalities and feminist
campaigning activities with a simple request to bring in a badge that was meaningful to them and
record the story behind the badge. We conducted 25 in‐depth interviews with individual women and
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