The Feminist Washing Line

For centuries, laundry has been coded as women’s work. Domestic, repetitive, badly paid and – frequently – unpaid. 

In Die grosse Schere [The Great Gap] (2002), produced for public spaces, Lisl Ponger strings garments associated with traditionally female professions along a washing line. Aprons, uniforms, workwear that signal care, service, cleaning, retail, hospitality. Roles that are essential, yet notoriously underpaid.

By relocating these occupational garments into a public space, Lisl collapses the divide between home and workplace. She makes gendered labour literal, suspended in plain sight, where the line becomes a horizontal measure of inequality. 

And as well as holding up the fabric, the washing line acts as a feminist symbol. Feminist politics has long used the language of visibility, of bringing hidden labour into the open. Here, what has been naturalised as ordinary is reframed as systemic.

The work critiques the structural inequalities that result in women being paid less than men. The familiar becomes political and through Lisl’s lens, the washing line is no longer a domestic backdrop. It is infrastructure. 

• Using Lisl’s work as inspiration, we’re building our own Feminist Washing Line in the museum and inviting visitors to add their voices.
• In the museum, we have a stack of paper T-Shirts and all the materials needed to decorate them
• Online, download the T-Shirt template from here, print it, decorate it and EITHER post it to Hundred Heroines, Unit 19 Nailsworth Mills, Avening Road, Nailsworth, GL6 0BS OR make a photo/scan and email it to us at hello@hundredheroines.org
• Optional – add your social handles and we’ll feature the T-shirts on our platforms

Ideas

• Write a slogan that matters to you
• Add the name of a woman who has inspired you
• Draw, decorate or pattern it in a way that reflects who you are
• Keep it bold and simple or cover every inch

We can’t wait to see the designs!