Page 149 - Šolsko polje, XXXI, 2020, 5-6: Teaching Feminism, ed. Valerija Vendramin
P. 149
Reviews
Mary Beard: Women & Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books,
2018.
“But if we want to understand – and do something about – the fact that
women, even when they are not silenced, still have to pay a very high price
for being heard, we need to recognise that it is a bit more complicated and
that there is a long back story” (p. 8). The power of speech that is heard is
not just a starting point but a central theme of the manifesto Women and
Power by Mary Beard. The manifesto is divided into two parts, the first is
entitled Women’s Voice in Public and the second Women and Power, which
are closely intertwined. The 2018 edition of Women and Power (the first
edition is from 2017) revisits the agenda a year after the beginnings of the
#metoo movement (the “world’s most famous hashtag”, as noted by Mary
Beard, p. 98) and in the Afterword reflects on new discourses on rape and
sexual harassment.
Mary Beard thus unfolds cultural and historical moments from
Greek and Roman antiquity to the American period of slavery and the
present, all through the central theme of the power of women’s voice in
public. But, at the same time, the enterprise does not slip into a simple
collection of cases of the silencing and oppressing of women, which is not
so uncommon for descriptions of overlooked women and their works, re-
bellion and history. At the end, such “collections” appear more as com-
plementing the “main” history or as its decoration, exactly there where is
the place for a woman, a place of silent decoration behind the glass cab-
inet. Mary Beard, on the contrary, with her scientific sharpness and es-
sayistic narrative style points to elements which are crucial and common
147
Mary Beard: Women & Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books,
2018.
“But if we want to understand – and do something about – the fact that
women, even when they are not silenced, still have to pay a very high price
for being heard, we need to recognise that it is a bit more complicated and
that there is a long back story” (p. 8). The power of speech that is heard is
not just a starting point but a central theme of the manifesto Women and
Power by Mary Beard. The manifesto is divided into two parts, the first is
entitled Women’s Voice in Public and the second Women and Power, which
are closely intertwined. The 2018 edition of Women and Power (the first
edition is from 2017) revisits the agenda a year after the beginnings of the
#metoo movement (the “world’s most famous hashtag”, as noted by Mary
Beard, p. 98) and in the Afterword reflects on new discourses on rape and
sexual harassment.
Mary Beard thus unfolds cultural and historical moments from
Greek and Roman antiquity to the American period of slavery and the
present, all through the central theme of the power of women’s voice in
public. But, at the same time, the enterprise does not slip into a simple
collection of cases of the silencing and oppressing of women, which is not
so uncommon for descriptions of overlooked women and their works, re-
bellion and history. At the end, such “collections” appear more as com-
plementing the “main” history or as its decoration, exactly there where is
the place for a woman, a place of silent decoration behind the glass cab-
inet. Mary Beard, on the contrary, with her scientific sharpness and es-
sayistic narrative style points to elements which are crucial and common
147
