Inside Culture

Women on Top (5x1)

Air date: Feb 25, 2022

Mary Beard explores how thousands of years of stories and images stereotyping women have shaped our thinking and what this means for women who are in positions of power today. She is joined in her quest by a group of women who have smashed their glass ceilings and operated at the highest levels of political power, including the former prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, Baronesses Valerie Amos and Sayeeda Warsi, and presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mary also meets former MP and novelist Edwina Currie at the Pankhurst Centre in Manchester to discuss how art has treated women who either had or sought power throughout history – from Roman empresses to Elizabeth I and from suffragettes to Spitting Image. In Newcastle, playwright Caroline Bird provides a sneak peak of Red Ellen, her new play about pioneering MP Ellen Wilkinson. And in London, Mary steps onto the stage with actor Adjoa Andoh to discuss the portrayal of power – includi