Review Women & Power: A Manifesto Mary Beard Whatever one’s views on the 2016 Brexit referendum and the recent national election experience, or the outcome it delivered, the treatment meted out to many female MPs during that period was unacceptable by any measure. It is undeniable that an outrageous level of verbal abuse and threats of physical violence – which was widely tolerated and not condemned immediately and comprehensively as it should have been – drove many women from public life. To understand this better I picked up this slim volume which sets out to explain: “just how deeply embedded in Western culture are the mechanisms that silence women, that refuse to take them seriously, and that sever them (sometimes quite literally, as we shall see) from the centres of power.” (p xiii). Mary Beard is both a national expert and a down-theroad local person – who is also down-to-earth and carries her great learning lightly. She can be seen in Cambridge where she is professor of classics at Newnham College, or in the popular medium of television explaining with ease the tangled roots of our society. She is a Wolfson Prize-winning author with an international reputation, being a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In this short book of one hundred and thirty pages she writes clearly and concisely while presenting complex arguments and details in a readily understandable manner. She demonstrates conclusively that “When it comes to silencing women, Western culture has had thousands of years of practice.” (p xiii). The book is organised into two sections: “The Public Voice of Women” and “Women in Power”. It contains twenty-seven captioned illustrations throughout – some ancient and others very modern – all conveniently listed at the end. There are also brief references and further reading. In the book’s first section the author demonstrates that woven into our culture, our language, and into the millennia of our history, is the intention not only to exclude women but to parade that exclusion. She reveals that “public speech was a – if not the – defining attribute of maleness” (p 17) and “that unpopular, controversial or just plain different views when voiced by a woman are taken as indications of her stupidity. It is not that you disagree, it is that she is stupid”. (p 33) And yet it was always the case across all societies that ‘Women Hold Up Half the Sky’. Today, for many reasons, the denial of gender equality is being challenged. There is also an Afterword. This Afterword is particularly insightful as well as being highly personal. In it she addresses the phenomenon of rape – including her own rape as a young PhD student
46
www.melbourncambridge.co.uk
