It’s a "high-end" power in the traditional sense and linked to the image of the "glass ceiling", which not… — Mary Beard
It’s a "high-end" power in the traditional sense and linked to the image of the "glass ceiling", which not only places women out of power, but imagines pioneers as successful superwomen who only a few vestiges of male prejudice prevented them from reaching the top.
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Even more to the point, the root cause of the harassment that women have suffered (and the root cause of the earlier silence of so many) surely lies in the structures of power. If so, then the only effective remedy lies in a change to those structures. While fewer than ten percent of the directors of the top Hollywood films are women (that was the case in 2017), men will remain the gate-keepers of success in the film industry, and the effect of women's voices on its sexual culture – however loudly those voices have now been raised – is likely to be limited.
It’s not easy to make women fit into a structure that is initially encoded as masculine: what needs to be done is to change the structure.
As for the deep cultural structures that legitimize the exclusion of women, it is very likely that these gradual changes will last too long, at least for me. We need to reflect on what power is, what it is for and how it is calibrated, or in other words, if we do not perceive that women are totally within power structures, then what we need to redefine is power, not women.
p. 82
