Book review: Women & power: a manifesto by Mary Beard

On 6 February 1918, the Representation of the Peoples’ Act gave all men over the age of 21 and some women over the age of 30 the vote in national elections in the UK. Yet, notwithstanding this moment of considerable progress, women remain underrepresented in the seats of power. In Women and Power: A Manifesto, Mary Beard explores this continued exclusion as a consequence of women’s fraught relations with the act of public speaking. This is a timely, witty and impatient examination of the damaging ways that our societies perpetuate women’s silence and is required reading for those who see the fight for gender equality as over, finds Samantha Fu.