Women & Power

I quoted Mary Beard in the conclusion of my book, where I spoke of the position of women in the informal power structures of diplomacy.

The call for a redefinition of power in her manifesto Women & Power hit home for me. Beard points out how subjective our perception of power is, urging us to reflect on what power is for and how we measure it. Rather than just lamenting women’s lack of power through history, Beard adds another dimension by suggesting that it is not women we need to change, but rather our skewed definition of power. 

Her analysis… show more.

This might not be your most obvious pick for an Odyssey list, but Mary Beard’s book is special to me for a couple of reasons. She taught me when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and I’ll never forget our very first lecture as newly-minted freshmen when she stunned us into silence by parading before us a slideshow of images of winged, bell-bedecked Roman phalluses... Her straight-to-the-point, incisive writing always reminds me of the lessons she taught us, always to question and open things up to rigorous analysis, and her opening feminist discussion in this book (which is a great… show more.

This is a short, sharp, illuminating look at women’s place in the modern world, written by the wonderful Mary Beard. She is incapable of writing a dull sentence. Her insights are fascinating and stimulating. It’s impossible not to be drawn in.

In the Preface, she writes that sometimes, we don’t even notice the ‘mechanisms that silence women’, so deeply embedded are they in Western culture. They ‘sever’ women from the centres of power.

She draws on her astonishing knowledge of the classical world and tells us ‘the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans can help to throw light on… show more.

This slim volume packs a punch. Leading classicist Mary Beard tackles a critical subject that has underpinned debates about women’s role in public life across time. Why are women’s voices still marginalised in public life as different? Why is their leadership in political life still seen as needing explanation and justification? And why such hostility, something that Beard can address directly from her own experiences in the public eye. 

Beard traces the ancient origins of the complex relationship we still live with between women and power. She explores what messages are sent by the exclusionary practices of political life in… show more.