‘For mine is the power in this household’
Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto
Profile, 144pp, £6.99, ISBN 9781788160612
reviewed by Polly Bull
Mary Beard’s Women and Power: A Manifesto is an accessible, poignant and convincing call to arms. It investigates historical precedent for silencing and disempowering women, considers women’s own testimonies and looks at where we are today in the fight for gender equality. Building on two lectures for the London Review of Books, one from 2014, the other 2017, Beard deftly moves between ancient tropes and contemporary events to assess ways in which women’s voices have, and continue to be, discounted and belittled – sometimes violently. Beard considers parallels between the Greco-Roman world and present-day women in positions of power (or those aspiring to be). In doing so, she locates the almost impenetrable barriers women face, which are steeped in misogyny.
Beard’s success in this concise, pocket-book-sized publication is found expectedly in the way she puts stories from the past under the microscope to illuminate ongoing injustice. More unexpectedly, is the vulnerability and honesty of the afterword. The first part of it was written for the first edition of Women and Power in September 2017, and the second a year later for this updated edition. Here Beard reflects on the #MeToo movement and the social progress she’s noticed since her initial lectures. For example, issues of rape and sexual harassment are now being discussed more intensely and publicly than ever before, though she wonders how easy it will be to move from a hashtag to practical action. Beard questions the extent to which we have changed or stayed static. Crucially, she argues that we need to see the whole structure of power changed, rather than just elevating more women to its imperfect ranks.
As always, Mary Beard delivers feminism at its best. She argues with persuasive precision, and with history at the heart. Adroitly dancing between past and present to make her points, Beard escorts the reader back from the ancients to the immediate now with ease. This is particularly resonant in the afterword. Beard contemplates how men who have committed violence against women, specifically rape, understand and view their own actions. It roused me and made me contemplate future action.
Beard’s writing style is accessible and stimulating. She maintains the manifesto’s momentum, constantly introducing recognisable references from the past and today. The language is clear, never obfuscated. She is not afraid to use a pointed phrase, the reader is always sure where Beard stands. In relation to the US presidential election of 2016, she writes:
She’s conversational, yet certain. But Beard is not afraid to show vulnerability in her writing. She references ‘gloomier moods’ when pondering whether #MeToo will really have a social or political impact. She is insightful and courageous about her personal history, in particular when discussing when she was raped in 1978. Beard’s three strongest examples from the ancient world, which illustrate enduring ideas of silencing and disempowerment, are those of Penelope, Lysistrata and Medusa.
Telemachus, the young son of Penelope and Odysseus, tells his mother determinedly to keep quiet. He orders Penelope to go back to her ‘own work, the loom and the distaff’. He continues: ‘speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household’. Beard uses this story at the book’s outset to show that it was the public voice of women that was so objectionable, not merely what they said, but the fact they were saying something authoritative to an audience. She goes on to illustrate this further with the famous Miss Triggs cartoon by Riana Duncan, almost 30 years ago in Punch, in which the words of a woman in a committee meeting or boardroom fall on deaf ears until a man makes the exact same point and claims it as his own. Most women in our contemporary era can relate to the ‘Miss Triggs treatment'.
The next is Lysistrata, who led a sex-strike against the men of Athens until they stopped the war with Sparta. This story has been labelled ‘feisty feminism’ but Beard argues against its empowerment. In the fifth century BC context, she explains, the final scene involves a naked woman’s body objectified as a map of Greece, in which the peace agreement between the men of Athens and Sparta is carved out metaphorically. Beard emphasises that in Western history and culture, there is ultimately a real separation between women and power, and, in this example, decisions are made and actions taken with women ultimately as backdrop. (Even Athena, the warrior sprung from Zeus’s head, represents a hybrid, non-woman in a world where women might be stamped out completely.)
Beard’s third example is the most memorable and violent signifier of the negation of women from the echelons of power: Medusa. Beard describes this mythical Gorgon sister as ‘one of the most potent ancient symbols of male mastery’. One version of the story goes that Medusa was a woman raped by Poseidon in a temple of Athena, and then promptly turned into a monstrous creature as punishment, who petrified anyone who looked at her. The hero Perseus eventually kills her and uses her head as a weapon, even in her death. Beard shows us an extensive repurposing of the Medusa story in present-day politics. Critics have repeatedly depicted female politicians as gory disembodied heads, with phallic snakes squirming around them. Most tellingly, in the US election of 2016, Donald Trump was portrayed as Perseus, holding the decapitated Medusa-style head of Hillary Clinton. An example of normalised violence against women aspiring to power which was printed on t-shirts and tank tops, as well as coffee mugs and tote bags.
Mary Beard’s manifesto on women and power is fundamental and timely. She writes openly and honestly about her own story and the way we narrate personal events both when they happen and years later, once time has altered us and our perspective. I learned something crucial from Women in Power. That, in order for #MeToo to continue to have an impact, we need to scrutinise. We need to understand how gender plays out in all spheres of life, and how the current structure of power damages us all – even men.
Beard’s success in this concise, pocket-book-sized publication is found expectedly in the way she puts stories from the past under the microscope to illuminate ongoing injustice. More unexpectedly, is the vulnerability and honesty of the afterword. The first part of it was written for the first edition of Women and Power in September 2017, and the second a year later for this updated edition. Here Beard reflects on the #MeToo movement and the social progress she’s noticed since her initial lectures. For example, issues of rape and sexual harassment are now being discussed more intensely and publicly than ever before, though she wonders how easy it will be to move from a hashtag to practical action. Beard questions the extent to which we have changed or stayed static. Crucially, she argues that we need to see the whole structure of power changed, rather than just elevating more women to its imperfect ranks.
As always, Mary Beard delivers feminism at its best. She argues with persuasive precision, and with history at the heart. Adroitly dancing between past and present to make her points, Beard escorts the reader back from the ancients to the immediate now with ease. This is particularly resonant in the afterword. Beard contemplates how men who have committed violence against women, specifically rape, understand and view their own actions. It roused me and made me contemplate future action.
Beard’s writing style is accessible and stimulating. She maintains the manifesto’s momentum, constantly introducing recognisable references from the past and today. The language is clear, never obfuscated. She is not afraid to use a pointed phrase, the reader is always sure where Beard stands. In relation to the US presidential election of 2016, she writes:
‘It may take a moment or two to take in that normalisation of gendered violence, but if you were ever doubtful about the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded or unsure of the continued strength of classical ways of formulating and justifying it — well, I give you Trump and Clinton, Perseus and Medusa, and rest my case.’
She’s conversational, yet certain. But Beard is not afraid to show vulnerability in her writing. She references ‘gloomier moods’ when pondering whether #MeToo will really have a social or political impact. She is insightful and courageous about her personal history, in particular when discussing when she was raped in 1978. Beard’s three strongest examples from the ancient world, which illustrate enduring ideas of silencing and disempowerment, are those of Penelope, Lysistrata and Medusa.
Telemachus, the young son of Penelope and Odysseus, tells his mother determinedly to keep quiet. He orders Penelope to go back to her ‘own work, the loom and the distaff’. He continues: ‘speech will be the business of men, all men, and of me most of all; for mine is the power in this household’. Beard uses this story at the book’s outset to show that it was the public voice of women that was so objectionable, not merely what they said, but the fact they were saying something authoritative to an audience. She goes on to illustrate this further with the famous Miss Triggs cartoon by Riana Duncan, almost 30 years ago in Punch, in which the words of a woman in a committee meeting or boardroom fall on deaf ears until a man makes the exact same point and claims it as his own. Most women in our contemporary era can relate to the ‘Miss Triggs treatment'.
The next is Lysistrata, who led a sex-strike against the men of Athens until they stopped the war with Sparta. This story has been labelled ‘feisty feminism’ but Beard argues against its empowerment. In the fifth century BC context, she explains, the final scene involves a naked woman’s body objectified as a map of Greece, in which the peace agreement between the men of Athens and Sparta is carved out metaphorically. Beard emphasises that in Western history and culture, there is ultimately a real separation between women and power, and, in this example, decisions are made and actions taken with women ultimately as backdrop. (Even Athena, the warrior sprung from Zeus’s head, represents a hybrid, non-woman in a world where women might be stamped out completely.)
Beard’s third example is the most memorable and violent signifier of the negation of women from the echelons of power: Medusa. Beard describes this mythical Gorgon sister as ‘one of the most potent ancient symbols of male mastery’. One version of the story goes that Medusa was a woman raped by Poseidon in a temple of Athena, and then promptly turned into a monstrous creature as punishment, who petrified anyone who looked at her. The hero Perseus eventually kills her and uses her head as a weapon, even in her death. Beard shows us an extensive repurposing of the Medusa story in present-day politics. Critics have repeatedly depicted female politicians as gory disembodied heads, with phallic snakes squirming around them. Most tellingly, in the US election of 2016, Donald Trump was portrayed as Perseus, holding the decapitated Medusa-style head of Hillary Clinton. An example of normalised violence against women aspiring to power which was printed on t-shirts and tank tops, as well as coffee mugs and tote bags.
Mary Beard’s manifesto on women and power is fundamental and timely. She writes openly and honestly about her own story and the way we narrate personal events both when they happen and years later, once time has altered us and our perspective. I learned something crucial from Women in Power. That, in order for #MeToo to continue to have an impact, we need to scrutinise. We need to understand how gender plays out in all spheres of life, and how the current structure of power damages us all – even men.