The Word is Woman #12

Documenting the erasure of women from language and life.

Please note! Update 11/11/23: Since publication of The Word is Woman #12 yesterday, two of the organisations featured have edited their posts to ADD THE WORD WOMAN BACK IN! I’ve updated their sections below to reflect this. It just goes to show that pushback WORKS. Let’s keep reminding ourselves of this - it gives you a boost too when you think just how dire this situation could be if so many women weren’t working so hard to hold the line. “This isn’t over yet”!

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Welcome to issue #12 of The Word is Woman. Twelve issues certainly feels like a milestone, if not to ‘celebrate’ (we all wish we weren’t in this mess, right?!), but certainly to mark. When I wrote the first issue of TWIW back in August I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough material to do it weekly, but in fact, the opposite has turned out to be the case. I’ve probably got enough to do it daily!

Before we get started this week, a bit of housekeeping:

First of all, I did say a few weeks ago that I was lifting the paywall on the TWIW archive because many of you had got in touch to say you wanted to share the posts with the people - we all have some of them in our life, right? - who say, ‘Don’t be so alarmist, you’ve been reading the Daily Mail too much, of course this isn’t happening!’ I had a few technical issues doing this but these are now fixed and you can now get sharing.

Secondly, thanks to those of you who bought The Word is Woman pin badges, they sold out in a weekend! More are on the way and they should be here in a couple of weeks, in plenty of time for you to pin them on your festive stockings! You can preorder them here now, with a discount if you’re a paid subscriber to this substack.

Finally, an appeal: if you enjoy this Substack and want it to continue, please consider supporting it by becoming a paid subscriber. Your support allows me to continue writing. Thank you.

So, without further ado, here is The Word is Woman for the week ending 10th November 2023.