“Uncertain futures” is a collaborative research project developed by American artist Suzanne Lacy, working with researchers Dr Sarah Campbell and Dr Elaine Dewhurst, in addition to an advisory group consisting of women over fifty across Manchester. The project aims to shine a light on and examine the inequalities Manchester women over fifty face relating to employment, discussing how the intersectionality of age, gender, race, disability, class, and migration status, impact women’s work.
As a part of the project 100 women were interviewed on their lived experiences, in the exhibition these interviews were presented through video and paperwork. The first room details the project timeline has small TV and headset on display which plays snippets from the video interviews on loop, starting with the line “As a woman over fifty here is what I know”. The video proceeds to show clips of women discussing their experiences such as feeling invisible in the work place, declaring their skills and wisdom for addressing discrimination and creating accessible work environments, and countering misconceptions about what the life of a women over fifty is like.
The second room greets you with a wall covered floor to ceiling in clipboards with paperwork, on closer inspection it becomes clear that they are all interview transcriptions, the entire wall is full of different women’s experiences with work inequality. The document display in this second room helps visualize the scale of this issue, with each clipboard representing an example of these inequalities.
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