Women & Power: A Manifesto consists of “The Public Voice of Women” and “Women in Power,” two lectures of Cambridge classicist Mary Beard’s that have been converted into essays. Their subjects are self-explanatory: the former discusses how women have been systemically removed from platforms of speech, the latter the denigration of women in positions of authority. Though the scope is enormous, from Homer to shortly after the 2016 United States presidential election, the book is short: including the two essays, afterword, acknowledgements, and index, the book is a mere 115 pages, with big text and a lot of pictures. This makes it easily consumable in one sitting, though digestion is another matter entirely; the book hides a great deal of information and ideas within its covers, well worthy of contemplation. Nevertheless, Women & Power leaves many blindspots, and ultimately falls short of its ambitions of being a feminist manifesto.
The prose is reason enough to read. Professor Beard is fed up, herself a frequent target of nasty online diatribes, and she writes with equal parts steely determination and airy wit, the writing at once a sword and a breeze. The book’s ideas are persuasive and enjoyably presented, making it an engaging analysis of why and how women have been excluded from power. Unsurprisingly for Professor Beard, Women & Poweris at its best in its discussion of classical literature, where she lays bare the precedents for modern-day misogyny. Consistent in both essays is her demonstration of how power (whether in the form of public speech or temporal authority) has always been considered masculine and that any woman transgressing that boundary is female no longer; rather, she is androgynous, like Athena or Elizabeth I, or monstrous, like Medusa or the “yapping” Roman woman Afrania. Most impressive is how she draws the link between then and now: “Western culture does not owe everything to the Greeks and Romans… Yet it remains the fact that our own traditions of debate and public speaking, their conventions and rules, still lie very much in the shadow of the classical world.” This is what Professor Beard excels at: digging up the roots of the modern day, and making ancient history relevant and alive. What Professor Beard doesn’t excel at is feminist activism. Women & Power’s most glaring fault is its exclusionary feminism. “Western culture” is Professor Beard’s subject, an imprecise classification that both omits most women in the world and fails to account for the remarkable influence that Greece and Rome have had on non-European and American cultures. She ignores non-Western powerful women such as Indira Gandhi or Aung San Suu Kyi, and dismisses the higher percentages of women in the legislatures of Rwanda and Saudi Arabia (“I do wonder if, in some places, the presence of large numbers of women in parliament means that parliament is where the power is not”) without explanation. While “The Public Voice of Women” describes quotidien experiences of silencing, “Women in Power” limits itself to “national and international politicians,” an admittedly “very narrow version of what power is” that neglects the average everywoman. In spite of its title, it’s clear that Women & Power isn’t concerned with all women. Women & Poweris thus no “manifesto.” At the end of each essay, Professor Beard calls upon her readers to continue the mission of Women & Power, to reconsider our conceptions of voice and authority outside of a male context, but never elaborates on these reconsiderations’ practical applications. Though Professor Beard’s rallying cries are abrupt and unsatisfying, the misogyny she describes is inherent in our society, and she admits that there aren’t any easy answers. Considering her shortsightedness, asking for them may be demanding too much from Professor Beard.
Women & Power is good academic writing, its strength lying in its style, analysis, and provocation of questions. Unfortunately, like so much of academia, it is blind to the world around it, failing to account for non-Western experiences and reformative action. Though an insightful read about women in ancient literature, Women & Poweris not a feminist manifesto for the modern day.