Fish-Bicycle Shirt at International Women’s Year March in the 1970s

This is a photograph from the 1977 International Women’s Year march, capturing a woman wearing a shirt with an ironic slogan “A Woman Without a Man is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle” that challenged the idea that a woman’s worth depends on partnership – a debate that continues today. The photo was taken by Bettye Lane.

A well-known feminist slogan coined in 1970 by the Australian filmmaker, social activist, and writer Irina Dunn (born 1948); according to her recollection, adapted from the phrase “A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle” which she read in a philosophical text.

The original phrase appears to be “A man without faith is like a fish without a bicycle”, coined by Charles S. Harris in 1955 and published in a 1958 article in the Swarthmore Phoenix. The phrase is often erroneously attributed to the American feminist journalist and social political activist Gloria Steinem (born 1934), but she disclaimed this in a letter to Time magazine published on September 16, 2000.

Here’s another photo of a woman wearing a shirt with this famous slogan taken by Bettye Lane in 1979:

Bettye Lane (1930–2012) was an American photojournalist known for documenting major events within the feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement in the United States. She joined CBS television in 1960, and from 1962 to 1964 she was with the Saturday Evening Post. Her work has been published in the National Observer, Time, Life, and the Associated Press.

Lane’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution and some of her photographs are part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her work is also part of the collections of the New York Public Library and the libraries at Harvard and Duke University. Her photographs have also been utilized in documentary films and published books.