"The Middle Ages." "From the Fall of Rome to the triumph of the Renaissance." "The world is changing faster than ever before." "Empires rise and fall, the access of power tilts between the East and West, and Christianity and Islam are established." "Everything is defined by growth and flux, except for the position of women." "Developments in religion, philosophy and law enforce the subordination of women with renewed certainty." "There seems no end to the determination to keep women invisible and powerless and to justify it as the will of God, of nature, of common sense." "It's a fact that the history of women is the story of unequal status, unequal rights, unequal opportunities, but that's not the only story to tell." "Just as the labels and stereotypes of women as the whore, the virgin, the saint, the she-wolf are not the only definitions of womanhood." "Our story is about the women who defied convention." "The women who used the pillars of patriarchy, religion, marriage, the law, education, class and manipulated them in their own favour to find their own voice and to create their own paths to power and influence." "Throughout history, there have been exceptional women who have defied these structures - this is their story." "Singular figures who resisted and rebelled from within the confines of the palace, the convent and the harem." "Women who demanded to be heard, fought to have respect and insisted on having their own authority and, in doing so, helped shape our world." "And now, when women represent just 20% of the world's political power, the rewriting of these inspirational women back into history is essential." "Sixth century Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the dividing line between" "Europe and Asia, and the most powerful city in the world." "This is the eastern stronghold of Christianity." "Now, the state religion, its early openness towards women has been abandoned." "Instead of being recognised as active and equal in the Church, women are polarised into two simple categories - good or, for the majority, evil." "As a result, the overriding position for Byzantine women is that their rights are curtailed, their status belittled and their access to the public sphere of power and influence is denied." "But one woman defiantly challenges this system from within, setting an example for others to follow, Empress Theodora, who in a spectacular rise to power transforms herself from street performer and prostitute to empress and co-ruler of the Eastern Orthodox Church." "Theodora matters because she was the agent of her own destiny." "She was the first modern woman to make her own route to power." "At an age when royal women were merely dynastic pawns," "Theodora was her own person." "She succeeded by being more wily than Machiavelli, appearing to be purer than the Virgin Mary and being braver than any Roman general." "Theodora was fighting against the disdainful and prescriptive teachings of the Church, an increasingly misogynistic creed that not only gave women second class status, but also demeaned and excluded them, considering them guilty until proven innocent." "St Jerome summed up the view of the early Church fathers when he wrote, "Woman is the root of all evil."" "Female sexuality was always very dangerous and if you couldn't be as elevated as the Virgin Mary herself, the Mother of God, you had to be Eve and this classification of women into either pure evil and wickedness or the impossible to achieve" "Christianity of the Mother of God." "There was no middle ground, very difficult for Byzantine women at this time." "This was the site of the Hippodrome, the beating heart of Constantinople, a noisy, teaming, colourful place, filled with exotic wild animals, chariot races and circuses, and it was home to Theodora." "Her father was a bear keeper and when she grew up, she worked here." "As what depends on the gossip you believe - prostitute, actress, singer..." "It is claimed that by the time she was introduced to Justinian, the heir to the throne, she had become a state informer." "It is clear that from the outset, it was to be a highly unconventional relationship." "For a man with political ambitions to be linked with someone like Theodora, a street performer or worse, could only be an embarrassment." "By law, politicians were forbidden to marry actresses, and yet Justinian saw something special in Theodora and he was determined to make her his wife." "In an unprecedented move, the law was changed and in 527, when Justinian succeeded to the throne, Theodora, now his wife, was proclaimed Empress." "In an era when Christianity teaches that marriage is merely a refuge from sin, Theodora saw it as a means to power." "She creates an entirely new narrative for women - one where gender and class play an inferior role to ambition and ability." "Together, they created an enduring legacy, shaping our very concept of the modern Western state, the power of the Eastern Orthodox Church and even the basis of European law." "Justinian ordered a thorough compiling and modernisation of Roman law, known as the Codex." "The sections which refer to women reveal Theodora's influence, in particular when it comes to their legal status in the Byzantine Empire." "It's in the laws that follow the issuing of the Codex that we find real influence, I would say, particularly in the form of more" "Christian influence, in the relations between the sexes in marriage, causes for divorce, women not to be divorced on no grounds whatsoever, protection for children and women being allowed to be the guardians of their children." "She also insisted that there shouldn't be the recruitment of young women for prostitution, particularly going out into the country and bringing in innocent young girls and then putting them into brothels, so the Christian influence is very clear" "and I think that's where Theodora would have seen her own trajectory reflected in a very much more sympathetic attitude towards women." "And in this patriarchal world, what was Theodora's modus operandi?" "I think she must have learned a great deal about presenting herself when she was acting, when she was performing." "She was the entertainer par excellence and I think she simply understood that, when she married the emperor, she had to behave as an empress and she therefore adopted a completely different regal persona and became the wife of the emperor." "But she was more than the wife, she was the consort and they shared everything." "And, in that respect, she remade herself in a new form, in a new model of imperial female power." "Theodora was the backbone to Justinian's rule." "When religious dissent threatened the unity of the Church, it was Theodora who calmed the different factions." "When plague hit the city, striking down even the Emperor, it was Theodora who ran state affairs until Justinian recovered." "And when riots almost brought Constantinople to its knees, it was Theodora who told Justinian to stand his ground and defend the city." "According to historical record," "Theodora convinced Justinian with the following speech - she said, "I know it's the belief that women should never show" ""daring in front of men, never be bold when men hesitate." ""I know," she said," ""that flight is not the answer, even to save our lives."" "After the riots, Theodora and Justinian rebuilt Constantinople," "leaving a magnificent architectural testament to their joint rule." "Inside the Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine Empire's cathedral to the Eastern Orthodox Church, their intertwined monograms are carved into the fabric of the building." "Theodora's own political and religious triumphs are recorded inside its sister church, the Little Hagia Sophia, now a mosque." "Theodora knew that history is written by the victors." "She had already rewritten the rulebook on gender relations and now she was determined to write her own epitaph." "The inscription around the walls of the church reads " ""May he in all things guard the rule of the sleepless sovereign" ""and increase the power of God crowned Theodora," ""whose mind is adorned with piety and whose constant toil lies" ""unceasing in its efforts to nourish the destitute."" "This inscription is Theodora's valedictory speech to posterity." "It was her insurance that no matter what late historians might write about her, Theodora's name would never be erased." "The image of Theodora in the Basilica of San Vitale, in Ravenna, shows her with a halo around her head, the three wise kings embroidered on her cloak." "Her transformation from Eve the sinner to Mary the saint is complete." "The former actress and concubine had become an icon of her people." "By the time Theodora died in 548, women in the Byzantine Empire had greater rights and status than anywhere else in the world." "Today, 1,500 years later, women are still fighting for an equal role in Turkish society." "Women are seen as wives, as mothers, but if and when they do anything other than being a wife and a mother, that is seen as being too ambitious." "Whenever a woman becomes powerful and visible and vocal, we start trying to understand what's wrong with her." "We don't do such things to male leaders." "I think Turkey is a very complicated country." "You will come across many women who are very vocal and active in many areas of life, like media, medicine, academia, but there's one particular area where women are almost non-existent and that's politics." "Women are always lagging behind and always discouraged from the political world and I think that makes a big difference." "What we have been seeing over the last years is male politicians making these statements that directly concern the bodies and lives of women, talking about abortions, C-section, how many children should Turkish women have and then stating that men" "and women could not be equal, saying that women should not laugh out loud, in the public space." "saying that women should not laugh out loud, in the public space." "So when I look at where Turkey was and where Turkey is today, there is no clear progress in many areas concerning women." "And I think many women are worried that they might lose the rights that they take for granted." "In the 12th century, as the Byzantine Empire begins to wane, the axis of power and wealth tips towards Europe as it emerges from the Dark Ages." "There is an urban revolution, market towns flourish," "Gothic architecture soars, but this leap of confidence doesn't include everyone." "The Middle Ages is perceived as the era of the male, of the popes, kings, crusaders, priests, and within this tale of all-male primacy is the story of the all-male Church in the throes of great" "spiritual and temporal reforms." "The Western Church adopts new social customs and constraints for women." "Divorce is now banned." "Married women may no longer own land." "The Christian view of women as the source of moral pollution has been enshrined." "The problem with this narrative is that it's wildly simplistic." "I think that what makes the Middle Ages interesting to study is not how the Church made women irrelevant, but the number of women who through the Church found a route to power and influence that would otherwise have been impossible." "As virgins and brides of Christ, nuns were seen as beyond sexuality, unshackled from the labels and stigma of their sex." "And yet, even with a monastic life, the social codes by which men and women could operate were wildly unequal." "Women were excluded from within the Church hierarchy, barred from performing any Church offices and worse, denied their right to speak." "The imposition of silence, the denial of a woman's right to speak, is a weapon that's been used against women, going back to the earliest fragments of Sumerian law, which states that a woman who speaks out of turn should have her teeth smashed by a brick." "It's a brick that's been used against women, both literally and metaphorically, for the past 5,000 years." "One woman refused to be silenced." "From within the confines of her monastery here in Eibingen," "Germany, she created her own world from which an all-female perspective could thrive." "With great courage and tenacity, the German nun and latter day saint Hildegard of Bingen wrote books, poetry, composed music, preached sermons and took on the Church and won." "Hildegard was eight years old when her parents sent to a Benedictine monastery to be educated." "From childhood, she had experienced religious visions that she described as a flame that filled her mind and body." "In her 40s, Hildegard wrote one of her most celebrated works, the Scivias, or Know The Way." "The book describes 26 of her visions and offers an unique interpretation and expression of Christian ideals." "Hildegard's writing was too powerful to be ignored." "In 1147 at the Synod of Trier, Pope Eugenius III saw only just a half unfinished copy of the Scivias, but it was enough to convince him of Hildegard's visions." "He declared them authentic and inspired by God." "This gave Hildegard the authority to speak and the respect so that people would listen." "In an age where women's silence was second only to their chastity," "Hildegard had won the unprecedented right to use her voice." "She began to confront one of the biggest taboos of Christianity, the ban on female preachers." "Travelling across Germany, delivering sermons, she attacked the indolence of the clergy, the venality of secular leaders, and what she saw as the moral laxity of society." "She also undertook religious and moral correspondence with European royalty, from King Henry I I of England and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, to Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor." "Hildegard understood the power of language." "She knew how to manipulate literary conventions in order to achieve maximum effect." "She could be humble and apologetic if the situation required, or bold and strident if she felt she could get away with it." "In one letter, for example, she wrote" "Frederick, Emperor of Germany, and actually called him a juvenile fool." "As Hildegard became more celebrated throughout Europe, she successfully persuaded the Church to allow her to form her own monastery in 1165." "Rather than being a place of confinement, it became her seat of power, as she developed an unique female voice." "Through her writing, she presented a radical alternative view of the female body that was liberated from dominant notions of sexuality." "In Hildegard's view, nothing about femininity was forbidden or evil." "She even described the female orgasm." ""When a woman is making love with a man," ""a sense of heat in her brain," ""which brings with it sensual delight," ""communicates the taste of that delight during the act" ""and summons forth the emission of the man's seed."" "Sister Lydia has been a Benedictine nun at Eibingen for 26 years." "The passage where she describes a female orgasm is really rather extraordinary because she's writing at a period where all female sexuality is shameful and it's a path to damnation and to perpetual hell, and that's not how she sees sexuality." "She's much more earthy and natural about it." "But sexuality belongs to human beings, even if you are in a monastery." "It belongs to it and we have to go about that in a natural way." "And she is very free in her thinking and this is also a consequence of Benedictine life." "If you live Benedictine life, you have a great liberty in thinking and going about certain topics and this is already seen in 12th century." "Do you think there's something special about being within an all female community?" "For me, it's a normal thing." "But when living in a monastery is the life for a person, then you will be more free and more happy than somewhere else." "So, are you saying that the sacrifices that she made are actually the things that gave her a root to authenticity, to fulfilment, to a kind of autonomy and power within that relationship to God?" "Yes, I think so, because this is also my experience." "Liberty does not mean that you can do everything." "It means that you have to say no to some things, but to say no in liberty." "And this is a great chance to become really a personality, an authentic personality." "Yes, that religion for you is a path to self-actualisation." "Yes, it is." "Do you think Hildegard of Bingen would have been listened to today by the Church hierarchy?" "I think she would have the same problems as in 12th century." "In a funny way, what she was fighting for, women in the Church are still fighting today?" "In a way, yes." "But it's not astonishing for me because processes in Church normally take centuries." "So... 1,000 years, yes!" "1,000 years." "That's a long time!" "But we have hope that it changes." "In the early Middle Ages, Christianity has just one voice in Europe." "However, the emergence of the Renaissance in the 14th century introduces a new intellectual movement" " Humanism." "Based around the rediscovery of the classical texts from the Ancient world, the education of boys is transformed and now includes grammar, rhetoric, history and moral philosophy." "Education for daughters is seen as largely irrelevant." "Since women are excluded from civic and public life, moreover," "Humanism perpetuates the classical view of female inferiority." "For women in the Middle Ages, education is both the problem and the solution." "It was in this context that a truly exceptional woman, the first ever self-consciously feminist writer, picked up her pen in defence of her sex." "It was here, in 15th century Paris, that she dared to ask the question - what does it mean to be a woman?" "She was writing half a century before the printing press, in an age where most women were illiterate." "She is Christine de Pisan, one of my personal heroines." "Born in Venice in 1364," "Christine came to Paris at the age of four, when her father, a respected astrologer, was appointed to the court of Charles V of France." "Christine grew up in one of the most cultured and privileged places in all of Europe and her father, and probably" "Christine herself, had access to Charles V's extensive library, which is housed here in the Louvre." "Despite her mother's reservations, having an academic and liberally minded father meant that Christine enjoyed a rare and extensive education." "While this was a privilege beyond most women at the time, for Christine, learning wasn't a luxury, it became her only way to survive." "I believe that education is one of the most vital factors in determining a woman's opportunities." "And it's as true today as it was in the past, that you can judge a society by how it educates its women." "Christine, as one of the very few educated women in her own time, was painfully aware of the crippling effects that enforced ignorance has on women, depriving them of the tools of expression and excluding them from the world of ideas." "When her father and then her husband died, leaving Christine a single mother of three children and without financial support, she began writing professionally, selling her love poems to wealthy patrons." "A lone female voice, she was writing at a time when poetry was, almost by definition, male." ""All of you are, were, or will be whores," ""Whether by intention or action."" "This is a famous line from the Roman de la Rose, one of the most popular works in the entire medieval period." "In theory, it's a poem about courtly love, but in practice, it spewed out prevailing notions about women being immoral, deceitful and sexually veracious." "As a child of the Renaissance, Christie was appalled." "Humanism, their no supporter of women's rights, encouraged that everything should be questioned." "She confronted the scholars who defended the romance of the Rose, forcing them to debate with her on the true nature of woman." "In 1405, she wrote her great revisionist history of women," "The City Of Ladies, commissioning the best female illustrator in Paris to illuminate it." "I am meeting medieval literature specialist" "Anne Paupert at the National Library of France to see one of the only eight remaining copies of this revolutionary book." "What was Christine trying to do when she wrote this book?" "It's a kind of manifesto for the defence of women, but also to prove all the good things that women have done." "She was trying, I think, to have people be conscious of all that women could do, if they were given the opportunity and if they were taking the opportunity and getting some education and doing things themselves," "contrary to what men of her time said and that's how actually the book starts." "She is sitting in her study and she happens to read a book that says very bad things about women." "It's an anti-feminist book, as there were many of them in 14th and 15th century and Christine reads it for fun, she thinks, and then she thinks it's not funny and she's desperate." "And as she's desperate, she sees three ladies who come to her for reason, rectitude and justice, who tell her," ""We will build something to defend women, to protect women," ""but also to show how important women" ""have been in the history of humanity."" "On the next picture, you see Christine helping Lady Reason to build a big defence wall with brick." "All the bricks are famous women who did great things." "Women who have governed, who have fought, who have worked in sciences, in arts, in all kinds of domains." "She gives women something on which they can rely, to build for their own life." "The City of Ladies seems to be a defence against misogyny in that life will be different for women inside this particular city." "Is that right?" "Yes." "There is one passage, actually, which is very striking because it sounds very modern in a way." "Christine talks to Rectitude and tells her," ""I am troubled and aggrieved" ""when men argue that many women want to be raped" ""and that it doesn't bother them at all to be raped by men," ""even if they verbally protest." ""It would be hard to believe that such great villainy" ""is actually pleasant for them."" "Rectitude of course answers, "No, this is all lies and you know it."" "The conclusion of this chapter is even more striking." "Rectitude states, "A man would be executed for raping a woman," ""a law which is fitting, just and holy."" "She says things which are very new and very shocking at that time." "For me, Christine is the uncrowned Queen of the Renaissance." "Her literary genius was recognised in her own lifetime and her manuscripts were copied and translated across Europe." "However, her work was forgotten until the 1970s, when feminist writers rediscovered her through Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Second Sex." "I am meeting Najat Belkacem, the first female French Minister of Education, out of the 500 men who preceded her." "By the 15th century," "France and the Holy Roman Empire follow Salic law, a legal framework that explicitly excludes women from power in favour of male heirs." "In the rest of Europe, female sovereigns achieve power through dynastic succession." "Itself, a fraught and sometimes hazardous enterprise." "How they keep their power is the real test." "It's no coincidence that copies of Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies are in many of the Royal libraries of Europe." "Regarded as part history, part primer for royal daughters, it is given to the young Catherine De Medici," "Mary Queen of Scots and perhaps, most important of all, Elizabeth I." "On 15 January 1559, it was here in Westminster Abbey that Elizabeth I became Queen of England and Ireland." "Aged only 25, Elizabeth became Queen when the debate over female rule was at its height." "Just a year before, the Protestant preacher John Knox had published a hate filled rant against women in power, condemning all female rule," "Protestant or Catholic, as evil, abhorrent and inherently dangerous." "As befitted a member of the Royal family," "Elizabeth received an exemplary humanist education in the classics, and rhetoric, mathematics and philosophy." "Once in power, Elizabeth had to consolidate her position quickly." "She used language and symbolism to help establish her authority over the church, the court and the country." "But language is never neutral and in the Elizabethan period, feminine words are loaded with meaning." "So Elizabeth must bend language to fit her situation." "She is always referred to as Your Royal Highness, or Your Majesty, because these are gender neutral terms and when she has to be a woman, it can only be as a metaphor, the Virgin Queen." "I'm meeting actress Fiona Shaw, who is well versed in how the language of the 16th century offered the young Queen an effective defence against her critics." "In particular, Elizabeth's famous speech at Tilbury in 1588, when she spoke to rally her troops before the imminent invasion of the Spanish Armada." "I think the extraordinary phenomenon of the Elizabethan age was that language exploded." "Shakespeare's vocabulary expanded to something like 60,000 words, where many people just used 300 words normally just to get through life." "So there was a great excitement and I think she was surfing on this explosion of language." "Obviously printing had come in with Caxton and we were post Chaucer and Shakespeare was this Muhammad Ali of writing." "How do you think Elizabeth specifically used language to retain power?" "Because Elizabeth's speech at Tilbury sounds very Shakespearean?" "It does. "I have the body of a weak and feeble woman" ""but I have the heart and stomach of a King," ""and a King of England too."" "There's a sort of science to why the Elizabethan language worked so well and it's why actually the language has never improved since that time." "Which is that the battle between thought and feeling is captured, even in the word itself, so vowels hold emotion, and consonants hold intellect." "In general, in Shakespeare and probably for Elizabeth too, you want the intellect to just win." "So when she says, "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman", the word feeble does have feebleness in it." "It is also quite an emotional thing to say." "If you stop there, she would have been voted out very quickly, but, which is the small words have a huge power, so "I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman."" "Things are going down on the Richter scale." ""But I have the heart and stomach of a King."" "Woman is a much softer word than King, which is just there." "A King, a repetition of this monosyllabic word, of England too." "So it has all those games of language in it and I think feeble is the word that sticks out in the Tilbury speech." "And, in fact, it is the axis on which she turns the whole thing around to strength, so she uses the weakest word and then a but and then the word King." "If you reduce that speech, it would go, "feeble, but, King."" "Elizabeth's reign was further defined by her unmarried status." "In the Renaissance, marriage remains the single most important event in a woman's life, prescribing her status, property and inheritance." "There were role models of female rule across Europe that Elizabeth could have followed, most notably, Queen Isabella of Castile, who united Spain by marrying Ferdinand of Aragon." "But Elizabeth took a radically different route to power." "In effect, she was the first woman to successfully claim her autonomy." "But by the time she died in 1603, her subjects were still deeply conflicted as to whether to celebrate Elizabeth because of her sex, or in spite of it." "Even her principal minister, Lord Salisbury, wrote," ""she was more than a man and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman."" "Her successor, James I, erected this monument here in her memory." "But the inscription reveals the great confusion of language surrounding her." "She is the Mother of her Country, the Nursemaid of Religion, a Prince of the Realm." "Why couldn't she have just been Queen?" "17th-century Europe suffers through plagues, warfare and famine, infecting the continent with chaos and fear." "It is men and women at the margins of society who bear the brunt of a wave of persecutions known as the witch trials." "King James I publishes Demonology, a book that promotes the idea that women are more susceptible to demonic temptation because they are seen as the weaker vessel - their bodies leak and are unstable, changing from menstruation to childbirth to menopause," "making it easier for evil spirits to prey on them." "From the mid-15th to the 18th century, there were 90,000 witch trials, half of which ended in gruesome executions " "80% of the victims were women." "In my experience, every age has its way of labelling women pejoratively, but by the time you get to the witchcraft craze all those labels have come together in one perfect storm." "There's a context for this, which is about the way in which premodern people understood their world, which is about dualisms and about opposites." "So there's night and day and good and evil and, of course, there's male and female." "Witchcraft is fundamentally rooted in fear." "The fear of female sexuality, the fear of female social power, the fear of instability within a state, the fear of one religion getting the better of another." "This..." "The era of witch-hunting belongs to an age of anxiety and of a kind of a process of reshaping, and of, we might even think about, modernisation of European life." "So that what the witch represents within that is a kind of boiled down version of all the kind of fears and insecurities because the witch above anything else represents inversion and disorder." "It's the ideal mother turned into the bad mother." "It's the good neighbour turned into the wicked enemy." "It is the obedient servant turned into the rebel." "Everything about witchcraft is about the reverse of a social, economic or political ideal." "The fear of female sexuality and its destabilising effect on male supremacy isn't limited to Christianity." "The Koran holds that women have certain rights in family life - marriage, education and property - but it also defines unequal gender roles that become enshrined in Islamic law." "Medieval Muslim scholar Al-Ghazali calls women" ""a blight on the Earth"." "SHE READS ALOUD" "The perceived social danger of women's sexuality is controlled through seclusion and segregation from public life." "The ancient Assyrian and Hellenic custom of veiling is practised." "In the 16th century," "Islam is the basis of rule for the Ottoman Empire, the one powerhouse that can challenge the economic and cultural dominance of Renaissance Europe." "For over six centuries, the Ottoman Empire was the richest and most powerful of the world's Islamic dynasties and, alternately, the sultans were envied, admired and even feared by the West, none more so than Suleiman the Magnificent," "under whose reign the empire reached its peak." "Suleiman oversaw great developments in Islamic art, literature, architecture and the law, but what I find most fascinating is that," "like the Emperor Justinian over a millennium before, his success is inextricably linked with the woman he chose as his wife." "Her name was Roxelana and she became the most infamous woman in Ottoman history." "Kidnapped from the Ukraine at the age of 15 and sold into sexual slavery," "Roxelana was able to use skill and opportunism to shape the Ottoman court to her own advantage." "Roxelana - or as she is known in Turkey, Hurrem - transformed the nature dynastic politics." "Her controversial rise to power started in the harem, the private secluded living space where the queen mother, the sultan's concubines and their children lived." "The harem has been one of the most enduring European images of female oppression and segregation, but it also prepared a select number of women to serve the political interests of the sultanate." "The English term harem comes from the Arabic root meaning sacred or forbidden, but that's not what it meant to 16th-century Europeans." "They believed that the harem functioned as the Sultan's private brothel and the women enslaved there were simply for his personal pleasure." "The reality was actually more coldly calculating than that." "The harem functioned as a kind of breeding ground for potential sultans." "The Ottoman government had devised an ingenious way to ensure that royal women could not amass independent wealth or exercise power by forbidding the sultans to marry." "Instead, having all their children with different slave women, only allowing one concubine to have one male heir, and after that she was banished from his bed and the harem." "This is a dynastic structure that does not believe in primogeniture." "It doesn't believe the eldest son automatically becomes the sultan." "All royal males are considered to have a shot at the monarchy." "A son becomes sultan by eliminating his brothers." "Sometimes this means out and out combat, in which one is killed and another is killed, and then one remains and he becomes the sultan." "And what's the role of women in that?" "The role of women here is motherhood." "Every candidate for the throne has his mother with him and her job is to build power behind him, send out spies to find out what plots may be afoot." "Part of that competition is also amassing supporters." "The more people behind you, the more soldiers you've rallied, the more money you've got..." "It's like a political campaign." "..you have a better chance." "The important thing to say here is that her job, her primary job, was to protect her sons." "Roxelana was one of hundreds of harem slaves, but she did not accept her fate passively." "Whether by design or accident, she fell in love with Suleiman and he with her." "The letters and poems between them attest to a profound and sincere love." "What Roxelana does is stay with Suleiman long enough to produce five sons and a daughter, so Roxelana breaks this rule and ushers in a new kind of family with Suleiman that almost looks like a monogamous arrangement." "The strength of Suleiman's love for Roxelana can be judged by the fact he broke with the Ottoman taboo against marriage among the sultanate." "Having first freed Roxelana, he then made her his legal wife in 1534." "He renamed her Hurrem, the laughing one." "Roxelana had successfully transformed herself from slave to the wife of the sultan..." "..but the future of her children was still at risk." "Life at court was a game of deadly musical chairs, with mothers and sons constantly plotting to kill their half-brothers, and Roxelana played the deadliest game of all." "To ensure that it was her own sons who took the throne, she engineered the execution of Suleiman's first-born son." "She also orchestrated the assassination of Suleiman's Grand Vizier, Ibrahim, whom she suspected of working against her." "She ensured that the next three Grand Viziers were her ciphers and the fourth was her son-in-law, whom she knew would do her bidding." "Roxelana did more than any other mother could possibly do to protect her sons." "By taking motherhood, the most traditional role expected of a woman to its extreme," "Roxelana ingeniously carved out a new role for herself and for future women in the imperial harem." "To reinforce her influence in domestic and foreign affairs, she moved, along with her entire retinue, to the centre of the Topkapi Palace, breaking the physical barriers between herself and the centre of power." "Roxelana really sets up a precedent for female diplomacy, which really heats up after her." "After Roxelana, it's really the queen mothers who are the prominent women of the dynasty." "One of the interesting things about this practice of gender segregation and gender seclusion is that women talked to other women." "And, in a sense, they could tap into a whole world of knowledge that men didn't have access to." "Though invisible to the public," "Roxelana created her own public persona, commissioning great civic works, most notably in Istanbul and Jerusalem." "One of the few places where ordinary women could meet to discuss their private affairs, marriage plans for their children and even conduct business deals was the hamam, the baths." "The Haseki Hurrem Hamam, built in Roxelana's honour, had pride of place in Istanbul's most prominent square, opposite Theodora's Aya Sofya." "Even if Roxelana herself excited mixed feelings, the hamam became a cornerstone of women's social life in the city." "It carved out a space where husbands and fathers had no rights of intervention." "Roxelana died in 1558." "Her mausoleum stands here, next to her husband's, in the grounds of the Suleymaniye Mosque." "Roxelana's long and bloody dynastic struggle had been assured - her son Selim became the sultan eight years later." "Her daughter Mihrimah became the most powerful princess in Ottoman history, exerting her influence on architecture, politics and international diplomacy." "Reflecting Roxelana's influence, royal wives and mothers would continue to act as regents for their husbands and sons for almost 130 years, a period now known as the Sultanate of Women." "To my mind Roxelana, was one of the great strategists of her era." "From a position of extreme vulnerability, she did more than survive - she completely transformed royal sexual politics." "And although Islam denied her the right to a public face, nevertheless, she achieved a public presence, both through her architectural legacy and through her influence in political affairs." "After her death in 1558, the relationship between the court and the harem would never be the same again." "Roxelana operated from behind the scenes, a means of power that women have used since the dawn of civilisation." "Perhaps the most striking example of this is in the Mogul empire, where an empress ruled India" "largely unseen, yet still omnipresent." "In doing so, she helped to create the visual aesthetic of India we know today." "In the late 16th century, the Mughul dynasty, descended from Genghis Khan, was one of the most efficient government machines in the world." "Through its ports and cities flowed unimaginable wealth of spices, gems, cottons, indigo, silks and saltpetre the gunpowder." "They created a vast empire that covered almost one million square miles and ruled nearly 150 million inhabitants." "Inseparable from this economic success, I argue, was women." "I believe that women's participation in a country's economy is one of the strongest engines of stability and prosperity." "Women were the chief makers of many products, the chief buyers of many commodities and, I would say, the chief tastemakers of India." "Central to this was the Persian-born Empress Nur Jahan - wife, diplomat, politician, entrepreneur and artistic visionary." "Nur Jahan ruled the empire, in fact, if not in name, when she became the 20th and last wife of Emperor Jahangir." "They governed from here, the Red Fort in Agra just north of Delhi, the centre of politics and commerce." "Throughout history, one of the more controversial routes to power, and one that frequently ended in bloodshed, was that of a marriage between a weak or incapacitated king and a strong queen who then went on to usurp his role." "Legend has it that Jahangir used to joke that he put his wife in charge because all he wanted out of life was Nur Jahan herself, the arts in general and wine in particular." "What I find so interesting about the Empress Nur Jahan is that she took up the reins of government not to undermine or exclude her husband the Emperor Jahangir, but in order to support him." "But, to do this, Nur Jahan had to first redefine her place at court." "The Moguls were Muslim invaders, ruling with the consent of a Hindu aristocracy." "The existing Vedic culture also contained sharp polarities regarding women." "The epic poem Mahabharata says..." "SHE READS ALOUD" "Hindu and Islamic cultures both adopted purdah, the religious and social practice of female seclusion, restricting women's personal, social and economic activities outside the home." "Before Nur Jahan, there was a divide between the public and the private sphere." "By the private sphere, we refer to the 'zanan kanna'." "It was a clearly demarcated territory - very private, very domestic kind of a space for the women of the court." "And it was very clearly distinct from the sphere of the male." "But with the coming Nur Jahan to power in the 16th, 17th centuries, we actually see a blurring of the boundaries." "We see the private sphere very much spilling into the sphere of the public." "That's how Nur Jahan's personality is considered to be so revolutionary in the wider historical narrative because she was actually the one who broke away from the stereotypical, you know, female... description." "Nur Jahan transformed the idea of femininity and the Mughul court." "She encouraged artists to take up the depiction of women, redesigned clothes to encourage more freedom and movement, and also went hunting - proving herself to be an expert shot." "But when it came to politics, as Nur Jahan couldn't show her face, she had to find ways to rule discreetly." "There are accounts that she observed purdah by standing behind a thin marble screen, whispering her commands to Jahangir." "Foreign representatives from the East India company soon discovered that, if they wanted to trade with India, they had to work under Nur Jahan's authority." "Every treaty, every contract, every trade route all required Nur Jahan's signature." "In recognition that she was the real force of imperial power, there were coins minted in her name." "Nur Jahan's position at the centre of trade also had profound effect on the visual aesthetic of India." "Her love of Persian miniatures, together with the European floral embroidered silks she received as gifts, came together in a new expression of Mughul art and architecture." "This is Nur Jahan's mausoleum to her parents, the most expensive project of her entire reign." "The result is a masterpiece of Mughul art." "A perfect fusion of Persian and Hindu architecture, and Nur Jahan's innovations can be seen everywhere." "Her use of white marble, which had never been done before, was so different from the use of red sandstone that was typical of her era." "Next, in the pietra dura, the highly polished stone inlay that covers almost every surface of every wall." "And, finally, in the decorations themselves - from the exuberant floral designs to the intricate lace carvings." "This would be the influence for one of the most iconic buildings in the world..." "..the Taj Mahal - built by her stepson Shah Jahan." "I believe that this is Empress Nur Jahan's real legacy, inspiring visual landscape of India that we still revere today." "After her husband's death, Nur Jahan was exiled by her stepson, demonstrating just how tenuous power can be for a woman." "This is still an issue that modern India needs to challenge." "We believe that all spaces, urban and rural, must include women and girls." "Not just in going to schools or doing their work, but also in how they shape the city, how they formulate the rights of the city, to redesign the policies and the politics of the country." "We need more people like Nur Jahan." "Leadership is never given, it's taken." "We need far more women who take leadership to be part of the economic decision-making, the political decision-making and who take a lot of people with them - both men and women." "It's not our place to judge civilisations." "It's not about assessing blame for the obvious injustices that women have endured." "What's more important is that we open our eyes to the full panoply of history." "We have seen how women have shaped and moulded the world we live in today." "The era of being a footnote to history is over." "These extraordinary women were working within systems they had no part in creating, but laws and ideals are not the same as customs and reality, and in reality they found, through their own agency, a route to power and influence." "I firmly believe that their greatest legacy they left to us is the truth that the ability to rule, to create, to inspire, to educate, is an ability that lies within us all." "If you are interested in finding out more about world-changing women, the Open University has produced a collection of free postcards." "To order, call..." "..or go to the website below and follow the links to the Open University."