Women and Power

Why is it that, even today, powerful women are described as 'shrill' or 'bossy,' while powerful men are called 'strong' and 'authoritative'? In Women & Power, acclaimed classicist Mary Beard takes this ancient question and shows that our discomfort with female authority isn’t new—it’s baked deep into the cultural DNA of Western civilization. She argues that from Homer’s Penelope to Twitter trolls, women’s voices have been silenced, diminished, or punished whenever they enter public and political spaces.

Beard contends that the very structure of how we imagine speech, leadership, and authority is gendered male. Power itself, in Western lore and practice, has been coded as masculine. The book unearths thousands of years of history—from Greek myth to Roman politics, from Elizabeth I to Hilary Clinton—to show how women who speak or rule often must transcend, mimic, or deform femininity to be heard at all. At its core, Women & Power is a manifesto urging us not just to open doors to women but to redefine what power is and how we see it.

The Ancient Roots of Silence

Beard starts with Homer’s Odyssey. When Penelope descends from her quarters to make a modest request of a bard, her teenage son Telemachus tells her, essentially, to shut up: 'Speech is the business of men.' That moment, Beard says, was the prototype for the entire Western framework that separates men’s 'authoritative speech' from women’s 'domestic chatter.' From that rebuke onward, authority resides in male 'muthos'—public, meaningful speech—and women are relegated to the private sphere.

This classical inheritance runs through centuries: Greek comedies mocking women who speak in assemblies, Roman commentators describing female voices as 'yapping,' and myths like Io, Echo, and Philomela—each punished for speaking or transformed into silence. Beard connects these stories to modern cultural reflexes: when female politicians are interrupted, when a woman’s idea is ignored until a man repeats it, or when online harassment literally tells them to 'cut off your tongue' or 'get back in your place.'

Cultural Templates of Power

Beard goes further to show how our mental image of a 'leader'—from professor to president—remains stubbornly male. Close your eyes, she says, and picture a powerful person: what you see probably isn’t feminine. Even women who reach high office adopt the symbols of masculinity: deepened voices, trouser suits, 'male' rhetorical styles. Elizabeth I declared herself to have 'the heart of a king'; Margaret Thatcher trained to lower her pitch; and Angela Merkel embodies the pared-down uniform of authority that minimizes her gender. It’s not that women haven’t entered power—it’s that they must constantly adapt to a framework that excludes them.

From Myth to Modern Politics

Beard’s analysis of myths like Medusa and the Amazons reveals how deeply Western art and storytelling cast powerful women as monstrous. Medusa, whose severed head decorates Athena’s armor, represents the ultimate demonization of female agency. Beard links this ancient symbol to modern depictions of women in power: cartoons of Theresa May with serpent hair, memes of Trump as Perseus holding Clinton’s bleeding Medusa head. Across millennia, these images normalize gendered violence and reaffirm male dominance.

These patterns aren’t just cultural curiosities—they shape how we listen. When women speak publicly, they’re described as 'whining' or 'shrill,' their points trivialized. Online and offline, they’re silenced through ridicule, trolling, or linguistic framing that denies them authority. Beard insists that until we fundamentally redefine what counts as power and voice, progress will remain partial and fragile.

Why This History Matters Today

Beard urges readers to see that gender inequality isn’t maintained just by laws or numbers—it’s maintained by language, myth, and imagination. We can’t simply add women to existing power structures; we must redesign those structures. True equality doesn’t come from teaching women to speak like men; it comes from redefining what authority itself sounds like and means. Her conclusion, drawn from centuries of history, is defiant and clear: we must stop trying to fit women into a male-coded model of power and start creating a new one that values collaboration, credibility, and mutual recognition over domination.

Core Message

Western culture has practiced silencing women for millennia. Recognizing that lineage—from Penelope to social media—allows us to see misogyny not as a modern failure but as a historical tradition we can finally unlearn. Beard’s challenge to you is to hear differently, speak differently, and imagine power anew.

Beard opens her argument with the first recorded act of silencing in Western literature: Telemachus shutting down his mother Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey. It’s more than a domestic moment—it’s symbolic training in masculinity. To become a man, he takes over public speech and dismisses his mother’s voice. Beard uses this to trace the long classical arc of women’s exclusion from authoritative expression.

Mythic Lessons in Silence

Greek and Roman myths manifest this exclusion through transformation and mutilation. Io, punished by being turned into a cow, can only moo; Echo, condemned to repeat others’ words, loses originality. Philomela, raped and silenced by the cutting out of her tongue, becomes a haunting metaphor for the lengths to which male power will go to suppress female testimony. Beard highlights how these myths don’t just describe violence—they encode cultural rules about who may speak and whose speech counts.

Defining Male Speech

In antiquity, public speech defined masculinity. Roman orators were vir bonus dicendi peritus: 'good men skilled in speaking.' The female voice was seen as disorderly, high-pitched, and threatening to civic harmony. A woman speaking publicly wasn’t just unconventional—she was unnatural. Beard quotes Dio Chrysostom, who imagined a plague where men were cursed with female voices, a prospect more horrifying than death. This anxiety over pitch and authority still echoes when women today are criticized as 'shrill' or 'nagging.'

Echoes in Modern Culture

Beard connects these ancient tropes directly to modern practice. When a female colleague’s idea in a meeting goes unheard until repeated by a man (the 'Miss Triggs' cartoon), it’s a replay of Telemachus and Penelope. Online abuse that threatens women’s speech—“cut off your tongue,” “shut up you bitch”—echoes Philomela’s mutilation in digital form. Authority is still heard in deep male timbre, while women's words are trivialized or punished. Beard suggests that understanding these historical roots helps us see sexism not as accidental but as systematically inherited from a civilization that defined speech as male property.

Historical Continuity

From the ancient forum to social media threads, women’s voices have been framed as anomalies. Beard insists that we must confront this history if we hope to break it—the modern silencing is ancient, deliberate, and deeply embedded in how we imagine speech and power themselves.

If speech was male, power followed suit. Beard’s second major argument explores how Western political and cultural systems coded authority as masculine—and why women in power still navigate those frameworks. The very architecture of leadership, from rhetoric to reputation, was built by men and for men.

Classical and Mythic Archetypes

In Greek myth, women with power—Clytemnestra, Medea, Antigone—were disastrous. They violated gender norms, destroyed families, and threatened the state. The patriarchal lesson: female command equals chaos. Beard contrasts these with Athena, the warrior-goddess who seems empowering but is actually a masculine hybrid born from Zeus’s head, never a mother herself. Even the Amazons, often reclaimed by modern feminism, were originally depicted as barbaric threats to male civilization. They symbolized the danger that arises when women rule men.

Modern Replays: From Elizabeth I to Merkel

Fast-forward two millennia. Elizabeth I’s famous 'heart and stomach of a king' speech reinforced that only by assuming masculine traits could a woman lead. Margaret Thatcher’s 'handbagging' and voice training echoed the same adjustment, while Angela Merkel’s utilitarian wardrobe signals conformity to male-coded power. Beard argues that even progressive societies still expect female leaders to neutralize their femininity—to be androgynous or 'honorary men.'

Language of Exclusion

The metaphors of women's advancement—'smashing glass ceilings,' 'storming citadels'—imply invasion. Headlines like 'Women Prepare for a Power Grab' show how female access is treated as theft. We position women outside power's walls, even as they enter the building. Beard argues that true equality requires dismantling this spatial metaphor entirely: women should not be 'let in' but made foundational to the system itself.

A Reversal of Perspective

Instead of asking how women can gain power, Beard asks how we can stop defining power as what men already have. The goal isn’t to adjust women to fit the mold—it’s to break and remold power itself.

In one of her most striking sections, Beard examines how the myth of Medusa crystallizes male fear of female potency. A beautiful woman raped and punished by transformation, then decapitated by Perseus, Medusa became the enduring symbol of the danger—and suppression—of feminine power.

The Ancient Icon

Athena’s armor bears Medusa’s severed head—a trophy displaying the triumph of male control. Renaissance art, from Caravaggio’s bleeding head to Cellini’s bronze Perseus trampling her corpse, turned this ancient image into a spectacle of dominance. Beard notes that these aren’t isolated artifacts—they set the template for how mastery over women is aestheticized as heroism.

Modern Resurrections

The Medusa metaphor returns vividly in political discourse. Angela Merkel and Hillary Clinton have both been 'Medusa-fied' in memes, depicted with snake hair or severed heads held aloft by Trump-as-Perseus. These are not fringe jokes—images were sold on mugs and T-shirts. Beard shows that public life still makes spectacle of violent masculine victory over women. Centuries after Perseus, the symbolism remains virulent.

Reclaiming the Image

Feminists have tried, with limited success, to reclaim Medusa as an emblem of female strength ('Laughing with Medusa,' as Hélène Cixous framed it). Beard admires the intent but observes that the reclamation hasn’t rewritten the cultural code. The Medusa myth still functions more often as mockery than empowerment. Until society redefines what power looks like—until decapitation no longer reads as victory—the trope will persist.

Cultural Insight

Beard’s interpretation of Medusa reveals how art perpetuates political gender order. It teaches you to see that representation is not neutral: every depiction of the silenced or punished woman is an aesthetic rehearsal for society’s own hierarchies.

Beard introduces the 'Miss Triggs question'—named after a famous Punch cartoon where a woman makes a suggestion only for a man to repeat it and earn praise. This light joke, she argues, encapsulates the workplace and political pattern of ignoring, dismissing, or trivializing women’s contributions.

Cultural Conditioning

From boardrooms to legislatures, women’s voices are treated as interruptions rather than contributions. The scornful language—'whining,' 'whinging,' 'strident'—functions as a cultural reflex that strips authority. Beard explains that this isn’t merely personal sexism but a system learned over millennia from classical prototypes that equated female sound with chaos. You may think you’re reacting neutrally to tone, but you’re actually tuned by cultural history to hear 'deep' as credible and 'high-pitched' as hysterical.

Digital Echoes

Online abuse is just the loudest version of these habits. Trolls who threaten women into silence replay the same rituals of exclusion practiced in ancient forums. What’s new, Beard notes, is how these attacks exploit the illusion of democratization: social media was supposed to expand voice, yet it mostly amplifies domination. The advice to 'ignore trolls' repeats the old injunction to 'keep quiet.'

Rethinking Authority

Beard argues that voice training or mimicry of male confidence—lowering pitch, adjusting assertiveness—won’t solve the problem. Real progress depends on redefining what authority sounds like. She invites you to consider the power of alternative rhetoric: collaboration rather than conquest, expertise expressed without aggression, authority without imitation.

Practical Takeaway

To counter the Miss Triggs effect, Beard urges both women and men to become conscious listeners—to notice whose voices are ignored and why. Change starts not in policy but in perception: teaching society to hear women not as anomalies but as authorities.

In her closing section, Beard turns from diagnosis to prescription. If power has been historically defined as possession—something you 'have' or 'take'—she proposes that we redefine it as collaborative effectiveness, the ability to make a difference and be taken seriously, individually and together.

Beyond Prestige

Most political and corporate systems equate power with public notoriety or formal leadership. Beard calls this a narrow, 'high-end' model based on male hierarchies and charisma. Women’s exclusion isn't solved by adding a few token figures to the top; it requires reimagining the entire spectrum of influence—from grassroots organization to intellectual authority. She cites movements like Black Lives Matter, led by women like Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, as examples of distributed, collective power.

Changing the Definition

For Beard, power should shift from noun to verb—to power—emphasizing action, influence, and cooperation rather than control. In this vision, everyone has access to power as participation, not domination. The challenge isn’t helping women climb ladders—it’s dismantling the ladder.

A New Template

If cultural stories have coded leadership as violent or heroic, we can write new narratives grounded in agency through partnership and creativity. Beard envisions authority as a collective voice rather than a single amplified one—a chorus, not a shout. In her afterword, she pleads for what she calls 'the right for women to be wrong' without losing legitimacy—a luxury men have always had. When failure invokes ridicule rather than opportunity, women stay cautious and silent.

Vision for the Future

Beard’s manifesto is not about fitting women into power but rebuilding power from the voice up. It asks you to examine every forum, meeting, and system—not for how many female faces appear, but for whose speech is valued, heard, and believed. Real equality, she insists, begins in listening.