"That man over there say that women needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns and no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man — when I could get it — and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen 'em most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"
Sojourner Truth spoke these words to the second annual convention of the women's rights movement in Akron, Ohio, USA, in 1852. To her words, there was no reply from those men who had argued against women's rights by claiming that women are innately weak and inferior.
Born into slavery around 1797, Sojourner is said to have lived for over a hundred years. She never learned to read and write but had great oratorical skills, intelligence and courage, which she put to use as a Christian evangelist, a fighter for women's rights, for the abolition of slavery and for the welfare and rights of ex-slaves and their dependents.
So much has changed for women since then — and yet so much remains the same. While, in most countries, women have the vote and slavery has been outlawed, many of the challenges and contributions that Sojourner brought to the women's movement then are vital to it today.
Women are still silenced and made invisible by the ubiquitous stereotypes of what society wants them to be and aspire to be. Women are still grappling with questions of race, ethnicity and class and their relationship to the oppression of women as a sex. Sojourner posed all this sharply through her words and her presence in the women's movement of the time but also through the absence, at least in most written histories of the period, of many others like her.
Of course, some of the forms have changed, other issues are now raised, and the modern women's movement is marked by its diversity. Since the floodgates were opened, it's become clear there is no aspect of capitalist society that does not warrant a feminist critique.
We still have a lot to win, and as long as we live under a system whose very existence depends on women's subjugation, our many victories will have to be defended and even won again. Through its every institution this society seeks to deny, distort and rebut
the feminist cause, so the issues need to be raised again and again.
We hope to run "and ain't i a woman" as a regular column — in addition to and not instead of — constant coverage of events and debates within the women's movement and of concern to all women. In each issue, we want to make the point that, on all major events and all aspects of everyday life, feminist views need to be heard.