We’ve Been Arguing About Gender Equality for 2,300 Years. Why Aren’t We Done?
A Short History of Saving The WorldShow Notes
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
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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!
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Every generation thinks it’s living through unprecedented change. A Short History of Saving the World is a new history podcast with Angus Hervey and historian Ada Palmer that explores the turning points, crises, and ideas that shaped world history - and the hidden patterns that connect them. From ancient civilisations to modern global events, this series zooms out to ask a bigger question: what actually happens when the world feels like it’s falling apart?