Mary Beard · Podcasts

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS plays host to a couple of podcasts by noted historian, Mary Beard,


London Review of Books - Women in Power

I’ve talked before about the ways women get silenced in public discourse. And there’s plenty of that silencing still going on. We need only think of Elizabeth Warren being prevented a few weeks ago from reading out a letter by Coretta Scott King in the US Senate. What was extraordinary on that occasion wasn’t only that she was silenced and formally excluded from the debate (I don’t know enough about the rules of procedure in the Senate to have a sense of how justified, or not, that was); but that several men over the next couple of days did read the letter out and were neither excluded nor shut up. True, they were trying to support Warren. But the rules of speech that applied to her didn’t appear to apply to Bernie Sanders, or the three other male senators who did the same.

London Review of Books - Public Voice of Women

There are only two main exceptions in the classical world to this abomination of women’s public speaking. First, women are allowed to speak out as victims and as martyrs – usually to preface their own death. Early Christian women were represented loudly upholding their faith as they went to the lions; and, in a well-known story from the early history of Rome, the virtuous Lucretia, raped by a brutal prince of the ruling monarchy, was given a speaking part solely to denounce the rapist and announce her own suicide (or so Roman writers presented it: what really happened, we haven’t a clue​).

Mary's blog - A Don's Life
Mary Beard - wikipedia

Female Sporting Pioneers

Women were banned from participating in the ancient Olympics in Greece. When Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Games in the late 19th century, he had no plans to accommodate women on the field of play either. At the first Olympiad of the modern era, held in Athens in 1896, every competitor was male.

"As for the admission of women to the Games, I remain strongly against it," said de Coubertin. "It was against my will that they were admitted to a growing number of competitions.  "Their role should be above all to crown the victors."

For all that, there was no shortage of women who wanted to participate. In 1884, Wimbledon held its first tennis championship for ladies. The match was contested in front of "a numerous and fashionable company assembled at the grounds", according to the Daily Telegraph.

Progress remained slow and, frustrated by the lack of opportunity, women started to take matters into their own hands. A women's sport movement set up their own Games in the spring of 1921. This was a five day competition held in Monaco and was organised by Frenchwoman Alice Milliat.

She was described as "the soul of the women's sports movement, a living example of modern woman accustomed to all sports disciplines and fulfilling the role which falls to women in this vibrant 20th century".

The Games were an immediate success and were repeated in 1922 when organisers claimed "they would eclipse the success which attended them last year for entries are more numerous." 

Continue reading article by Phillip Barker @ Inside The Game

Mistress of Herbs: Saving Uteruses Worldwide

Recently a racket involving the removal of uteruses from healthy women in Kalaburgi hit the headlines. In the city, however, an Ayurvedic doctor has prevented thousands of women from going under the scalpel. 

Dr Gowri Subramanya, has dedicated her life to educating people about the benefits of ancient Ayurvedic medicines and has treated several women ailing for various issues related to the uterus. She is the granddaughter of Pandith Narasimha Murthy, Palace Vaidya of Mysuru royal family. She resides in Banashankari.

She has successfully treated more than 1,300 women and prevent them from undergoing needless surgeries. Not only people in the country, she boasts of patients even from abroad, from countries like Australia and USA. 

Read More Here @ New Indian Express

3,000 years of beauty enhancement in China

Chinese women have been attentive to their physical appearance since the ancient times. As is common with trends related to people's personal appearance, they come and go, only to regenerate and take on new forms when the circumstances are right.

Cosmetics have been used by people all around the world to accentuate their physical features for millennia. In China, this practice of face adornment gradually spread from the ruling class to the general population.

According to historical accounts, women in China were complementing their looks with lipstick, nail polish and perfumes as far back as two or three thousand years ago. During the imperial times, upper class women and traditional yiji entertainers, similar to Japan’s geishas, were the main trendsetters.

Read More Here @ GB Times

Welsh Women

From Wales Online comes these three interesting articles on Welsh women:

Welsh Women & The Vote:

In the summer of 1913 many Welsh women took to the roads. They were usually quite well-off, professional women themselves or married to professional men, and could afford to travel by train or sometimes even by car or carriage. They were walking to make a political point. They wanted the vote and they were using a peaceful way to campaign for it. Read More HERE

Kate Bosse-Griffiths:

Kate Bosse-Griffiths was born in Wittenberg, the German town where Martin Luther had initiated the birth of Protestantism, in 1910. Having studied Archaeology and Egyptology in Berlin, Bonn and Munich, she gained a doctorate for her thesis on the human figure in late Egyptian sculpture in 1936 and was appointed to a post in Berlin, poised for a career curating the world-renowned collections in its museums. Read More HERE about this Egyptologist who fled Nazi persecution.

Women & the National Library of Wales:

The National Library of Wales opened to the public in 1909 in a temporary location at the Assembly Rooms in Aberystwyth before moving to its permanent home on Penglais Hill in 1916. Between the years 1909 and 1912 around 350 individual readers used the library’s reading room and consulted more than 1,300 books, manuscripts, maps and prints.

Unsurprisingly, men were in the majority, but 14% of the readers during this period were women. It was predominantly a younger female generation who used the library, as almost two-thirds of the female readers were under 30 and many were enrolled as university students. Read More HERE and meet the women academics of the 19th Century.

Don't Mess With Historian Mary Beard

In addition to being a classics professor at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Newnham College, and Royal Academy of Arts Professor of ancient literature, Mary Beard is also a best-selling author whose most recent opus, >SPQR, shines a fresh light on ancient Roman history. She’s also the host of various TV programs, such as Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed. All of which would make you think she’s not one to be messed with when it comes to arguing over the past. But that doesn’t stop game mansplainers from having a crack...

Read More Here @ SBS Guide

‘Daughters of the Forest’

The Mbaracayú forest is located at a remote spot in Paraguay, formed by the upper basin of the Jejuí river and the Mbaracayú Forest Nature Reserve. The place is a sanctuary for a number of endangered species and a hotspot of biodiversity.

But for people living around the area, daily life can be a challenge. Going to school, for instance, is not easy, not only because children have to make their way there by cutting through the thick vegetation that takes over the roads, but also because of a lack of resources for education as well as the prejudices society has against women.

In 2008, Moises Bertoni Foundation, the body that manages the natural reserve, established the Mbaracayú Educational Center as an initiative to offer quality education for teenage girls living in and around the reserve. It offers high school technical degrees in environmental sciences.

This is the focus of the 2015 film “Daughters of the Forest,” directed by San Francisco, California-based Samantha Grant. The documentary will be shown at the 10th Annual Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival, to be held in March 23-27.

Read More Here @ Global Voices

See Also: 

• Daughters of the Forest
• The Daughters of the Forest

Maria Cunitz - 17th-Century Astronomer

Urania Propitia is a remarkable volume for many reasons. Published in 1650, this work of astronomy demonstrates a command of high-level mathematics and astronomical calculation. It also reveals a deep understanding of Keplerian astronomy; its author both simplified and corrected Kepler's math for locating planetary positions. Finally, the book was written in German as well as Latin, which helped to both establish German as a language of science and make the tables accessible outside of the university. But Urania Propitia lays claim to yet another impressive quality: It was written by a woman .......an astronomer named Maria Cunitz.


Publication (paid for by Maria c.1650) of this work — the earliest high-level printed scientific book written by a woman — caused Cunitz (1610 - 1664) to be aclaimed as the most learned woman in astronomy since the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria.

Read More @ The Smithsonian and @ History of Information

Chhaupadi - monthly exile of Nepali women

Hindu ritual forces Nepali women into monthly exile | Daily Mail Online

The practice is linked to Hinduism and considers women untouchable when they menstruate.

They are banished from the home -- barred from touching food, religious icons, cattle and men -- and forced into a monthly exile sleeping in basic huts.

In some areas, women are also made to spend up to a month in the chhau goth after they have given birth.

Two women recently died while following chhaupadi -- one of smoke inhalation after she lit a fire for warmth, while the other death is unexplained. These incidents have spurred fresh impetus to end the practice.

Chhaupadi was banned a decade ago, but new legislation currently before parliament will criminalise the practice, making it an imprisonable offence to force a women to follow the ritual.

Read More Here @ Daily Mail