Women and Power

Mary Beard

Profile Books

Otago Daily Times, 2018

One of the saddest things about the ongoing fight for sexual equality is that the terms ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism’ have become associated with an aggressive and exclusionary agenda, rather than the desire to create a society in which the contribution of both men and women to historically gendered roles are recognised and valued. Furthermore, the bitterness of current debates, both within and about feminism, has scared many people away from participating in the conversation.

From this perspective Mary Beard’s manifesto is a refreshingly accessible exploration of the cultural roots of misogyny and how to address the socially entrenched power structures that still exclude all but a few women from positions of authority.

Originally commissioned by the London Review of Books, the first section of Women and Power traces contemporary constraints on the female voice back to its roots in Greco-Roman society where public discourse was the defining characteristic of masculinity, a construction that automatically excluding women from speaking with authority on anything other than ‘women’s’ business, either as a spokesperson for their families or (sometimes) in defence of their own virtue.

The second part of the book expands this argument to explore the extent to which the gendered language of power recapitulates these constructs and the extent to which women such as Thatcher, May, Merkel, and Clinton have (or have not) resisted being packaged into male templates of authority.

Perhaps the most telling example Beard cites to support her thesis is the personification of Hilary Clinton and Angela Merkel as Medusa, perhaps the most ancient of symbols of male mastery over the destructive potential of female power. During the 2016 presidential campaign in America, one of the more popular political logos of the Trump campaign depicted him as Perseus brandishing the bloody, severed head of a snake-haired Hillary Clinton, while a female comic who dared display a decapitated Trump was promptly fired.

Although such imagery has never been deployed here in New Zealand there are numerous other examples of the same constrains in play here. The voices that challenged Helen Clark’s ability as a childless woman to understand the needs of ‘ordinary’ families are now questioning Jacinda Ardern’s capacity to be both mother and Prime Minister. And, despite the fact that both men and women have contributed their stories to the MeToo campaign, the movement runs a very real risk of being dismissed – in a neat inversion – as a witch-hunt, with the (female) witches persecuting blameless and defenceless men.

Beard is only too well aware that the gains made over the past few decades have been frustratingly slow and often require women to adopt a ‘masculine’ persona, but her exposure of the deeply misogynistic foundations of today’s power structures suggests an alternative solution; rather than force ourselves into positions pre-coded as male, we should instead look at redefining what ‘power’ means.

Even if you don’t accept Beard’s initial propositions, her unpacking of historical perceptions of the female voice is fascinating and well supported by references and recommendations for further reading. And her suggestion that we need to redefine rather than infiltrate positions of social and political authority has much to recommend it, particularly because it provides a means to empower not just women but other overlooked minority groups. This will not be easy to achieve, but it is a challenge well worth taking on.