We’ve Been Arguing About Gender Equality for 2,300 Years. Why Aren’t We Done?
We figured out that women and men were equal thousands of years ago. So why did it take so long for the world to catch up?
Arguments for gender equality stretch back at least 2,300 years. Plato imagined men and women ruling together. And yet, again and again, the idea surfaced, stalled, disappeared and returned. In this episode of A Short History of Saving the World, Angus Hervey and historian Ada Palmer take the long view of gender equality: from ancient Greece and Renaissance Europe to the suffragettes, feminism and the unfinished work of progress today. Along the way, they arrive at the bigger question - do we really believe that all people are equal? Because perhaps the hardest part of equality isn't changing the law. It's changing our minds.
In this conversation:
- Why can an idea win centuries before the world actually changes?
- Did women have a Renaissance?
- Why does progress so often provoke a backlash?
- Have we mistaken the first 10% of gender equality for 90%?
- And what happens if we decide feminism has already won?
Timestamps:
1:06 The Quarrel: 2,300 Years of Gender Equality
2:36 Why Good Ideas Take Centuries
7:39 Equality is never a Straight Line
8:48 There Is No Single History of Women
10:27 The Papal Hostess
13:48 Progress, But for Whom?
16:17 Do Bodies Define Gender Roles?
22:01 The World’s First Bestseller
26:17 The Iceberg Problem
28:00 Why Progress Creates Backlash
29:29 How Ada Genders Her Characters
31:17 How Early Does Gender Bias Begin?
33:18 A Future Without Gender?
37:33 Category: Cage or Crowbar?
40:29 The Wounds We Inherit
43:06 Most Underrated and Overrated Milestones in the History of Gender Equality
56.17: Do We Really Believe that People Are Equal?
53:46: Footnotes of A Short History
1:06 The Quarrel: 2,300 Years of Gender Equality
2:36 Why Good Ideas Take Centuries
7:39 Equality is never a Straight Line
8:48 There Is No Single History of Women
10:27 The Papal Hostess
13:48 Progress, But for Whom?
16:17 Do Bodies Define Gender Roles?
22:01 The World’s First Bestseller
26:17 The Iceberg Problem
28:00 Why Progress Creates Backlash
29:29 How Ada Genders Her Characters
31:17 How Early Does Gender Bias Begin?
33:18 A Future Without Gender?
37:33 Category: Cage or Crowbar?
40:29 The Wounds We Inherit
43:06 Most Underrated and Overrated Milestones in the History of Gender Equality
56.17: Do We Really Believe that People Are Equal?
53:46: Footnotes of A Short History
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Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer
Produced by Amy Davoren-Rose, Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Ada Palmer
Produced by Amy Davoren-Rose, Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!
Creators and Guests
Host
Ada Palmer
Historian and novelist Ada Palmer studies progress, censorship, atheism & radical thought, and teaches at the University of Chicago. Her internationally award-winning science fiction novel series Terra Ignota (vol 1 Too Like the Lightning) depicts a twenty-fifth century in which mystery and corruption shake the globalized successors to the nation-state.
Host
Angus Hervey
Editor of Fix The News, recovering political economist, co-host of two podcasts: Fix The News + A Short History Of Saving The World. He is committed to showing that we’re making progress (even if we don't hear much about it) and that, despite the setbacks, humanity is still rising to meet many of the big challenges of our time.
