Nevertheless, we persisted
My IWD lecture on not complying in advance
Dear GFPs,
As I mentioned in my previous email, I was asked to deliver this year’s Edinburgh University annual International Women’s Day lecture — which I have now done! When I was there, the lovely people at ENDO1000 told me that after my newsletter last week you absolutely AMAZING people gave £1000 in donations to the project. That is in itself fantastic — but what is even more fantastic is that £1000 is how much it costs for each woman to take part in the research. So GFPs have fully funded a whole research participant which is just so brilliant and YOU are all brilliant and I honestly can’t think of a better way for this community to mark IWD. So thank you again — and if you haven’t got around to donating yet, you can do so here.
And as a special (and rare) bonus for the extremely generous GFPs who pay for a monthly subscription to my newsletter (and in so doing make it possible for me to carry on writing to everyone), I am sharing the full text of my speech below (GFPs who get this newsletter for free can read the introduction). Taking in the history of women in medicine, the history of Edinburgh university’s medical school, and the global backlash against women’s rights, this is an absolute beast of a lecture that took me weeks to pull together. I really hope you enjoy it.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming next time!
The future is female…or is it?
Good afternoon, thank you for having me, I’m delighted to be here today to deliver this year’s International Women’s Day Lecture.
What I’m less delighted about, though, is the context in which I’m giving it — because let’s face it, things feel pretty grim right now.
Everywhere you look, women’s freedoms and rights seem to be under threat. Government ministries focused on women’s rights are being defunded, deprioritised, or in some cases closed down altogether. Women’s reproductive choices are being taken away. Companies are one by one sensing the prevailing winds and, now that it is no longer politically expedient for them to do so, are no longer pretending to care about equality. People who have always been hostile to women’s rights are becoming increasingly emboldened, and women who fight for equality are being targeted with increased virulence both online and offline.
What a difference a decade makes.
Ten years ago it was fashionable to declare that the Future is Female, and politicians, CEOs, and celebrities were all lining up to wear “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts. From our position today, though, that future looks, at the very least, extremely strained.
But I’m not here to tell you how terrible everything is.
I don’t imagine that anyone who has come to listen to me here today isn’t aware of the turn we have taken in our political discourse. Many of you may be feeling scared, helpless, even hopeless. You may be feeling overwhelmed. And that is understandable. I’m scared. I often feel helpless and I often feel overwhelmed too.
But one thing I don’t feel — or at least, I try not to feel, is hopeless. Partly this is my natural stubbornness. I know the intention is for me to feel hopeless and I simply refuse to comply in advance.
But it’s not just that.
It’s also because I have good reason to have hope. And that reason comes from my knowledge that we have been through periods of intense backlash before — and we’ve got through them.
We have prevailed.
And we have come back fighting.