"This is the Pantheon in Paris - a mausoleum to honour the great men of France and the inscription outside says exactly that, "To Great Men, A Grateful Nation."" "All the heroes of the 18th and 19th century are buried here but not one single woman from that time." "And even today, there are 71 men and only two women buried here." "It's one thing to be written out of history but it's quite another when that's carved in stone." "And this is the issue that I have with recorded history - the message that it's only the men who count." "In this last film, I want to look at the women who were central to the revolutions that shaped the modern world..." "..courageous, visionary figures who fought for change and challenged the status quo." "Their history reveals that revolutions are all too often about exchanging one power dynamic for another, leaving women betrayed and excluded from the new societies they had helped to create." "But I also want to look at how women have redefined the very nature of revolution - fighting for equal rights to education, to political power and reproductive choice." "In the end, true revolutionary change comes not from the death of millions but from the death of prejudice, and women have changed the world by changing the arguments." "It wasn't violence that created the pivotal moment in women's history." "It was women themselves who inspired, demanded and seized the right to control their own bodies." "In the 21st century, there is a new revolution taking place." "Women are claiming their right to be heard, campaigning, resisting and speaking out against injustice." "Their aim?" "To break the old cycle of winners and losers and, instead, focus on equality for all." "The great thing about being a woman in representative politics is you get to break that mould and you get to show other women that, in fact, we do have a place in the front line, we do have a place in power," "we can exercise it well and better than many of our male counterparts." "It's 5th October, 1789." "It's cold, wet, the mood is desperate, the people of Paris are starving." "Driven to fury by rumours of stockpiling of bread, the women of Paris rise up." "It's the market sellers, the stallholders, the poissardes, the fish sellers, wives, mothers - they do what their husbands are too frightened to do." "They take matters into their own hands in a shocking and violent way." "Marching for six hours in the driving rain, dragging cannons, brandishing muskets, pitchforks, knives, they storm Versailles." "At six in the morning, the protesters tore down the gates, they ripped the ceremonial guards apart." "This was a mob baying for blood." "Marie Antoinette was still in her bedclothes." "She ran for her life down the corridor to the King's bedchamber." "She pounded on the door, begging to be let in, until someone finally heard her above the din and unlocked the door." "The protesters forced the King and the royal family and the National" "Assembly to leave Versailles and they physically brought them to Paris." "This was the moment when everything changed." "It was now the King who was beholden to the people and suddenly, a democratic future seemed possible." "The King had refused to sign the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man" "And Of The Citizen, fearful that it would introduce democracy to France." "What broke his resistance was the storming of Versailles by the women of Paris." "The King hastily signed the declaration the next day." "Without the catalyst of the march on Versailles, who's to say that" "Louis XVI would have signed the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man?" "He was looking for a way out when the women turned his world upside down." "As for the declaration itself, for such a radical document, it's surprisingly short - a mere 800 words." "But in just 17 propositions, it offered a bold new vision for France, one that guaranteed full social and political rights." "But the devil was in the details." "Women soon discovered that being a citoyenne, the feminine form of citizen, did not make them equal citizens under the eyes of the law." "It turned out the liberte, egalite and fraternite was just that " "Iiberty and equality for the brotherhood." "But as the revolution progressed, more and more women wanted to take part." "They formed clubs, debating societies, revolutionary committees, but only one woman had the courage and the conviction to state on paper that the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man was incomplete without the rights of women." "And that woman was Olympe de Gouges." "Born Marie Gouze in 1748, she was the daughter of a butcher." "After the death of her husband, she moved to Paris, changed her name and made a career for herself as a playwright." "Olympe is one of the heroes of the French Republic who is not buried in the Pantheon." "THEY SING: # Olympe au Pantheon!" "# Olympe au Pantheon!" "#" "IN FRENCH:" "THEY SING IN FRENCH:" "IN FRENCH:" "These women have every right to be angry." "At the current pace of change, it's going to be 200 years before there's an equal number of men and women buried here." "What the protesters want is for the Pantheon to reflect the actual history of France and alongside the great men, to have the great women of the revolution, too." "This was the age of the Enlightenment, when logic and reason had supposedly conquered superstition and prejudice." "Yet the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose writings helped to inspire the revolution, saw nothing illogical in stating, "Man should be strong and active," ""the woman should be weak and passive."" "In 1791, Olympe would expose the self-serving bias that underpinned the Declaration Of The Rights Of Man by publishing her own declaration for the rights of women and the female citizen." "IN FRENCH:" "And she also talks about liberty and justice being the driving engine for women's rights." "IN FRENCH:" "So what was the effect of this document?" "Who read Olympe's declaration?" "And what was the reaction?" "Within a year, all debate would be closed down as the Jacobins' reign of terror began." "Fearing further uprisings like Versailles, they took extreme measures." "In October, they banned women from meeting in groups of five or more." "This was the beginning, when the revolution turned from being a means of liberation for women to an instrument of their oppression." "Within a year, the political tide had turned against moderates" "like Olympe, and when the Jacobins outlawed expressions of dissent," "Olympe refused to stay silent, even to save her life." "Olympe called on the French to reject violence." "She distributed an inflammatory poster called The Three Urns that encouraged people to decide for themselves how France should be governed." "The authorities arrested her and she was imprisoned here at the Conciergerie." "IN FRENCH:" "Olympe was sentenced to death on the night of November 2nd, 1793." "It's a terrible irony that one of the most eloquent revolutionaries of the 18th century was executed here, in the Place de la Concorde, on account of being a so-called traitor to the revolution." "And the question is, why?" "I think it's because Olympe, as a woman, breached the all-male sphere of politics and, as a woman, breached the all-male sphere of politics and, as a woman, used the supposedly male tools of reason, wit and logic" "to promote a feminist agenda." "Olympe's execution marked the beginning of a political backlash against women." "In 1795, they were banned from the National Assembly." "They were ordered to stay at home and to stop having opinions of their own." "And the rollback continued when Napoleon became emperor." "He instituted the Napoleonic Code which was harsher and more rigid than anything women had experienced in the previous 20 years." "It's a fact, by 1804, women were as powerless, if not more so, than the women who had marched on Versailles in 1789." "The code was a disaster for women's rights, giving fathers and husbands the ultimate power over their daughters and wives." "In marriage, it assigned unequal status between the two partners, adultery was only a crime for wives, they could not buy or sell property and were disadvantaged in divorce and inheritance." "For women, the code was the most enduring" "Iegacy of the French Revolution, their lives shaped by its dictates until the middle of the 20th century." "It was 1946 before French women finally got the vote and another 20 years before wives could work without their husbands' permissions." "But the battles of the French Revolution weren't irrelevant." "It was women like Olympe de Gouges who lit the flames of modern feminism." "And once they were alight, there was no going back." "A revolution that betrays the promise of egalitarianism and simply exchanges one male structure for another is hardly a victory for women, and yet, women continued to take part in the revolutionary movement spreading around the world, believing this was their only hope for change." "Liberation, republicanism, self-determination - these political ideas fell on fertile ground in South America and continental Europe." "By the early 1800s, the South American countries were fighting against Spain, demanding their independence, and women were fighting alongside men." "By the turn of the 19th century, South American colonies were rising up against Spain, demanding their independence." "In Ecuador, Manuela Saenz, fellow revolutionary and lover of Simon Bolivar, fought alongside him as six South American countries were liberated." "In Greece, playwright Evanthia Kairi campaigned to overthrow Turkish rule." "In Poland, Emilia Plater went into battle against occupying Russia." "And Kathinka Zitz-Halein founded the largest woman's organisation of the German Revolution in 1848." "Not all revolutions begin with mass meetings and public squares or on the battlefield." "In fact, I think that the greatest revolution of the 19th century started in the home with the education of girls." "Once campaigners began to argue that women must have equal access to education, then the genie was out of the bottle." "What was the difference between a girl's education and a boy's education in the 19th century?" "The main difference was that nothing much was expected of girls." "They might be educated by their mother, they might be sent to a small ladies' boarding school, even, or they might have a governess at home but governesses were badly educated themselves and weren't capable of giving an education of a very high standard." "There was certainly no higher education. 14, 16 - that was the end of the schoolroom for girls." "Their only hope was to stay at home and hope that somebody would marry them." "The first wave of feminists demanded equal ownership of property, access to the professions and political representation." "They also recognised, like Mary Wollstonecraft, that nothing would change for women without equal education." "With so many different issues at stake, a strong campaigner was needed to lead a united front." "Seems to me that Millicent Fawcett thought there was a lot of unfairness in society - women couldn't have the vote, they couldn't own property, they couldn't obtain a divorce." "And she wanted to not just change the world but change women, too, so that they could confront this unfairness." "She couldn't see why there should be any difference in the way that men and women should be treated economically, educationally, politically." "She married very young at 19 to Henry Fawcett, Professor of political economy at Cambridge and a rising Liberal MP." "Her one view was that women needed to have a university education that was equal to that of men." "She wanted women to make use of their lives." "When it came to women's education, what were the ways in which Millicent Fawcett drew attention to the cause?" "There was the idea that there should be a series of lectures for women in Cambridge on a variety of subjects that would interest women and would get their minds thinking." "And because so many women wanted to come, not only from the town but from outside, they had to provide lodgings." "Then it was decided that they would really have to build a hall to accommodate them and this first building went up to accommodate about 30 women." "And from then on, Newnham grew." "The first phase of Millicent Fawcett's campaign was achieved in 1871 when she co-founded Newnham College for women in Cambridge." "But that wasn't enough." "Education for her was a means to an end." "Millicent had so many different interests." "I mean, we know her now as a leader of the suffrage movement." "I mean, it was she who campaigned, to all intents and purposes, from 1866 to 1928 when women got votes on the same terms as men." "And she died in 1929, her work completed." "Millicent Fawcett was a quiet revolutionary and the tactics that she developed of combining grassroots activism with political lobbying would be adopted by other civil rights movements." "Of course, she wasn't the first person to harness the power of social protest but what marks Millicent out as a strategic genius is the fact that she took a root and branch approach to fighting female oppression." "She believed in empowering women, first through education and second, through legal representation." "By the end of her life," "Millicent was able to say that women's ultimate victory" "lay in the fact they could no longer be treated, either socially or legally, as if they were helpless children." "What I admire most about Millicent is that she did more than fight for change." "She gave women the tools to fight for themselves." "Britain was not alone in its reluctance to grant women the vote." "The first country was New Zealand in 1893." "In Europe, only Norway in 1913 and Denmark in 1915 gave women full democratic rights." "And for the next country, it would take a revolution." "Perhaps surprisingly, the country with the most advanced feminist agenda in the early 20th century was here in Communist Russia." "Leading this charge to remake Russian society into the Soviet ideal of the liberated and equal workers' collective was a firebrand from St Petersburg called Alexandra Kollontai - sexual revolutionary, author, diplomat, agitator, free spirit." "Remarkably, Alexandra Kollontai was the first woman to enter the inner circle of the Bolshevik government." "Her name is not synonymous with the heroes of the revolution." "Instead, her story lies here, gathering dust in the archives of the former Marx" " Lenin Institute." "Some people are born fighters and Alexandra Kollontai was one of them." "She'd been born into an aristocratic Russian family." "Her father was a tsarist general and she herself had the kind of upbringing that was typical of the Russian upper classes, complete with English nanny." "She couldn't get away fast enough and at the age of 21, she married an impoverished relative named Vladimir Kollontai." "But very soon, that escape route turned into a prison for her." "She hated domestic life." "She was interested in politics and she wanted to play a role in revolutionary Marxism." "Matters came to a head, though, when she visited a factory that her husband was about to manage." "Kollontai became enraged by the inhumane conditions suffered by the women workers there and decided, at that moment, that she would leave Vladimir and devote her life to the cause of the women workers." "Alexandra Kollontai went on to organise strikes and protests to help these women fight for equality." "It's easy to see why a woman like Alexandra Kollontai, driven, frustrated, angry, would be drawn to the philosophies of Marx and Engels." "Writing about the origins of the family," "Engels theorised that the emergence of patriarchy was driven by the desire for ownership - ownership of property, ownership of women's bodies." "And therefore, only a complete workers' revolution, one that abolished all rights to ownership in favour of the collective, would lead to a complete reordering of the relationship between the sexes - one based on mutual need, mutual respect and equality." "Exiled from Russia by the Tsar in 1908 for her activism, she was determined to return to ensure that women's rights were at the top of the Bolshevik agenda." "Just as in the French Revolution, it was the women who were the agents of change." "On 23rd February, 1917, it was International Women's Day and the women poured into the streets, organising protests and strikes." "Among them were the female textile workers organised by Alexandra Kollontai and the movement that they started, the momentum became impossible to stop." "A week later, the Tsar fell from power." "Kollontai returned to Russia in March of that year and became a prominent Bolshevik campaigner." "Lenin rewarded her by giving her a government role in social welfare and in 1920, she was made head of the Zhenotdel - a new department devoted to improving the lives of women." "As head of this department, Kollontai was now able to turn her utopian Bolshevik feminist visions into a reality." "How key was Alexandra Kollontai in changing women's rights and improving them?" "She drafted the first regulations that would create universal maternity care, she spearheaded equalisation of educational opportunities for women, she spearheaded women's engagement in the paid labour force as men's equals and she was the chief spokesperson" "for ideas about how women and men could treat each other as equals." "And it's particularly remarkable because she had not been a member of the Bolshevik party." "She wasn't in tight with the guys who led the organisation and yet, she still managed to persuade them to listen to her and to grant her considerable autonomy." "The Zhenotdel went so far as to argue for what we would call affirmative action - the promotion of women into leadership positions and things like trade unions." "They began to advance a programme for women's rights that was huge in changing the lives of women and men in the Soviet Union and then, because of the spread of communism across the planet, became adopted by communist parties all over the world" "from Nicaragua to China." "Kollontai promoted change in the lives of tens of millions of people." "The Bolshevik party introduced a range of radical reforms." "Universal suffrage was granted, homosexuality and abortion were decriminalised and access to health care was made free to all - reforms that would not be introduced in the rest of Europe for another 50 years." "But this wasn't revolutionary enough for Alexandra Kollontai." "She wanted to free women from what she viewed as the burdens of the family." "She believed childcare should be a social, rather than an individual, responsibility and that women should be able to have the same balance between life and work as men." "Alexandra Kollontai wanted to abolish domestic" "life as a matter of principle but the Soviets wanted women out of the kitchen for a practical purpose - the state had to modernise quickly and they could only do that by doubling the workforce." "This was the real purpose behind the rise of the new Soviet woman." "This was the new Soviet lifestyle and women were to be the co-builders of the road to utopia, a hand in enthusiastic participants in public life." "Lenin predicted, in 1919, that, "the real emancipation of women" ""and real communism would begin only where and when an all-out" ""struggle begins against petty housekeeping."" "In order for women to be equal to men, they needed to work outside the home and propaganda would become the tool to promote this new Soviet dream." "This poster was printed in the 1920s and you can see, on the upper side, there's the old life." "And here, underneath, this is the new life already." "You can see they are having lunch in the canteen, which is organised by the state." "And so, what does the slogan say?" "It's funny!" "Er..." ""Woman worker," ""the corporation frees you from the power of kitchen" ""and the stove!"" "Next one - poster showing the lady already working in the factory." "She's very happy." "You can see the growing figures and it says there is a growing percentage of women participating in governing the industry." "Exactly Alexandra Kollontai - ideas to make woman absolutely the same as the man." "It's an amazingly modern message, though, isn't it, this idea that, you know, women's participation in the workforce makes the country more prosperous?" "Yes, it was one of the key topics of the whole politics of the Soviet government." "And they succeeded." "Controversially, Alexandra Kollontai argued that women's emancipation should extend to their sexuality." "She thought marriage was an unnatural constraint on human behaviour." "Kollontai went even further." "She wanted to abolish the family and all aspects of domestic life, saying that children should be made wards of the state because only then could women be free to be themselves." "Clearly, that wasn't Soviet ideology." "That was Kollontai's own desperate reaction to historic oppression because, in essence, what she was saying is that women can only be real women when they stop being wives and mothers." "A lot of Bolsheviks thought talking about things like free love and people hooking up with whomever they want to and leaving whenever they feel like it, which is" "Iiterally what she was writing about in 1923, thought that that was, if not distasteful, at least putting priorities where the bourgeois feminists would have put them." "So she was suspect because she's talking about things that they did not consider politically significant." "Like Olympe de Gouges, Kollontai's radical agenda led to her condemnation by the political elite." "In 1922, Lenin had her removed as the head of the Zhenotdel." "In 1924, she took the offer of a graceful exile and spent the next two decades in the Soviet Foreign Service as ambassador to Sweden." "The last years of Alexandra Kollontai's life were bitter ones." "By the late 1940s, the gains achieved by Zhenotdel had been rolled back by Joseph Stalin." "Divorce, abortion, contraception - these all became difficult if not impossible." "The workers' paradise had given way to the Gulag." "When a country is in crisis, one of the first things to go are women's rights, and so it was in the Soviet Union." "The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has not improved the situation for Russian women." "Despite some political reforms, women are still paid less, receive worse health care and are underrepresented in all senior positions across society, yet the equality that Alexandra Kollontai fought for hasn't been forgotten." "MUSIC:" "A Punk Prayer by Pussy Riot" "Today, the feminist punk band Pussy Riot is at the forefront of a highly personal campaign for social equality which has resulted in them being harassed, beaten and imprisoned." "MUSIC:" "A Punk Prayer by Pussy Riot" "Nadya, what does Alexandra Kollontai mean to you?" "IN RUSSIAN:" "Do you think that Alexandra Kollontai can be a great role model for women today?" "IN RUSSIAN:" "MUSIC:" "A Punk Prayer by Pussy Riot" "While Alexandra Kollontai was arguing that socialism should deliver sexual liberation to Russian women, in America, women were looking to capitalism to deliver that same liberation." "Here, too, it was about women having control over their lives and bodies and becoming empowered in the process." "One of the greatest revolutions of the last 2,000 years for women was to come from an alliance between the heiress to an industrial fortune and a socialist radical." "New Yorker Margaret Sanger was one of 11 children." "Having witnessed the catastrophic toll on her mother's health from multiple pregnancies, Sanger made it her life's work to help women gain access to contraception." "It was the one thing that men had claimed control over for thousands of years and Sanger was determined to give that control back to women." "During her long battle for women's liberation, it began with the right to sex education and ended, finally, with the development of the pill." "She started as a nurse on the Lower East Side of New York and encountered a whole lot of women who were dying from abortions, who were pleading for advice on how to avoid an unwanted pregnancy." "She published a column for the New York Call." "It was later bound up into a pamphlet." "And she exhibited a feistiness." "Early on, when the government tried to suppress that column, she instead had them print a notice saying," ""Nothing!" "By order of the Post Office."" "So contraception was considered obscene?" "Yes, yes, along with abortion and other forms of pornography, as they said." "The Comstock Law was a federal law passed in 1873 to fight obscenity by prohibiting the sale, distribution through the mail or advertisement of a variety of materials, including contraceptives." "It was the law that Sanger came up against every time she wanted to promote birth control in a publication or distribute it through a clinic." "Margaret Sanger was on a crusade." "She coined the term birth control in 1914." "The following year, she broke the law by distributing diaphragms in the post." "She realised something else had to be done to gain publicity for the cause and her solution was to open a clinic." "She chose Brownsville, Brooklyn, as the site because it had many poor immigrant women and she opened the clinic in November of 1916." "She put out posters written in English, Yiddish and Italian to appeal to those immigrant women." "What's so interesting is how she's specifically linking birth control with poverty or the lack of birth control with poverty." "Indeed." "She saw access to cheap, affordable birth control as the key to getting out of poverty." "So she writes in the poster, "Mothers," ""can you afford to have a large family?" "" Do you want any more children?" "If not, why do you have them?" ""Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent."" "A few days later, the police came and raided the clinic, arrested Sanger on charges of violating the state laws." "Um..." "She opened the clinic a few days later again and she was again arrested, this time for being a public nuisance." "Um..." "She went on trial in 1917 and the publicity for it was enormous." "Sanger was, of course, giving interviews about the clinic as often as she could." "She was found guilty." "The judge ordered her to spend 30 days in jail or pay a fine." "She chose jail." "She was taken to the Queens County penitentiary where she proceeded to give the inmates birth control information." "Her arrest and trial brought Sanger the huge publicity that she had been courting." "In 1929, at a talk in Boston, she had one of her assistants gag her while her speech was read out." ""I see immense advantages in being gagged," she said." ""It silences me but it makes millions of others" ""talk and think the cause in which I live."" "Sanger looked for supporters anywhere she could, even becoming part of the popular eugenics movement of the time which advocated preventing the breeding of the unfit." "These views would later be used to smear her reputation." "Fortunately, Sanger had a gift for attracting wealthy philanthropists to her cause and one of them was suffragette and heiress to a vast industrial fortune, Katharine McCormick." "Her money would turn Sanger's dream into a reality." "The relationship between your grandmother, Margaret Sanger, and Katharine McCormick seems to have been really remarkable and unique." "My grandmother had the ability to keep in touch with women with money and was very good at parting them from their purse for her cause and, in the early 1950s, my grandmother had the idea of creating a birth control pill." "The diaphragm was the major method back then and my grandmother wanted something that was going to be foolproof," "100% effective and safe for women." "She found Gregory Pincus at the Worcester Institute of Technology to do the science." "And my grandmother brought Katharine McCormick together to have a lunch with them here in New York and my grandmother said," ""How much money will you need?"" "He said, "Well, you can start it with $40,000" ""but it's going to cost a lot more."" "And Katharine McCormick took out a cheque book after my grandmother kicked her under the table, wrote out a cheque for $40,000 and that was the start of a $1 million gift that Katharine McCormick made for the development of the pill." "An extraordinary fact that the most important medicine to liberate women was an idea of a woman and funded by a woman and done privately with no government funds whatsoever." "Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick wanted a pill that would be safe, cheap and available to all women." "Today it is used by over 100 million women around the world." "But after that informal lunch with scientist Gregory Pincus in 1951, it would take ten years for the pill to become available." "It's not a date that's celebrated." "In fact, it hardly ever appears in history books." "May 9th 1960 was a day that women's lives changed forever." "It's the day that the FDA approved the first ever birth control pill." "Margaret Sanger, who was 80 years old and in failing health at the time," "learned about the decision via the newspapers." "Upon hearing that her idea had come to fruition," "Sanger reportedly sighed, saying, "It's about time."" "What happened at the end of Margaret's life?" "She did so much towards the development of the pill and helping to get it funded, so why was she shut out at the very end?" "At the end of her life she felt she was forgotten and in many ways was forgotten." "She was a very strong personality." "She rubbed a lot of people the wrong way." "She had definite ideas about how things ought to be done and the doctors who were doing the clinical trials of the pill and doing the chemistry and the science and the biology did not want to hear from a nurse" "who never graduated from nursing school about how they ought to do their jobs." "Far from being celebrated as a revolutionary force for women," "Sanger is often vilified for her early views on eugenics." "These are often used to discredit both her and women's rights advocates today." "I have actually read many of Sanger's articles and her books." "Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist." "Margaret Sanger clearly embraced bigotry and racism." "Let me say with respect to your comments about Margaret Sanger, you know, I admire Thomas Jefferson," "I admire his words and his leadership and I deplore his unrepentant slaveholding." "I admire Margaret Sanger being a pioneer and trying to empower women to have some control over their bodies." "And I deplore statements that you have referenced." "There's a huge backlash by men, by conservatives, by those who don't want women to control their futures, who like the way things are with men controlling society, men having all the levers of power." "Not only in the United States but in many developing countries where there are forces trying to eliminate abortion access." "This battle is being repeated throughout the western hemisphere and poor nations in Africa." "My grandmother would be appalled that this fight is still going on." "I'm appalled it's still going on." "This should not be happening, this battle should have been won decades ago." "Despite Sanger's intentions," "American laws heavily restricted women's access to the pill." "Unmarried women were still denied their sexual rights." "The pill was revolutionary but it wasn't the perfect antidote to all the complex issues surrounding women's lives." "For one thing, it raised more questions than it answered about accessibility, side effects, sexual responsibility and though it did bring women freedom, it couldn't fight their battles for them." "Sexism, misogyny, violence, lack of opportunity, the glass ceiling, these struggles were ongoing." "These issues were taken up by women in the 1960s and 1970s." "Frustrated by the slow pace of social change, this movement became known as the second wave of feminism." "Artists like Judy Chicago created powerful expressions of this movement's ideology." "Her installation The Dinner Party is an invitation to join the missing women of history." "The second wave of feminism aimed to achieve more than just political change, it demanded that women raise their consciousness because the first wave of feminism in the 19th century had succeeded in winning the vote but it had not succeeded in earning a place for women at the table." "The second wave of feminists demanded that there be recognition for women's issues, from equal pay, equal work to equal opportunity and, of course, to be written back into history." "CHANTI NG" "This history is being written now." "In what some have termed the Arab Spring, women took part in spontaneous mass protests across the Middle East." "From Tunisia to Egypt, Yemen to Libya through to Syria, they joined the explosion of protests against tyranny and corruption." "Defying cultural and political traditions of female exclusion, women marched into the public squares, adding their voices to the calls for change." "So women were, just as men, involved in the various movements that challenged dictators across the region." "In Egypt, the famous 18 days in Tahrir Square where women who, maybe, prior to the protest, were not involved politically, started to get on board." "We felt like we had to come here and do whatever we can so we came here with some markers and some papers." "Many Egyptian women who participated told me at the time gender was suspended." ""We were not there as women, we were there as Egyptian," ""we were there as citizens, we were there as those resisting Mubarak."" "I think the challenges started the moment when women started to assert their own rights as women." "When they went out and said, we are here, citizens, but we are also here as women and we want specific rights as women." "The very same men who were standing next to them and supporting them started to feel challenged." "We cannot say women have gained rights." "If anything, life is much more difficult." "Although women in Libya have... actually participation in Parliament," "I've been talking to Libyan women's rights activists and they are regularly threatened, intimidated and silenced." "It is true that some women who in 2011 would have gone out on the streets to protest would not do that but they do other things now." "They make films, draw graffiti, they give talks, they make music." "I think women are very creative in finding non-violent forms of resistance." "Do you think the Arab Spring has moved the debate of women's rights forwards or backwards?" "I personally don't like the term Arab Spring because, first of all, it's not a spring." "Spring denotes something positive and I think many of the developments are quite negative." "But thinking about hope, the other source of hope they have in the region is the fact we have more and more young men and also older men, but I would say particularly younger men, who recognise that the struggle for greater gender-based equality" "is their struggle as well and that if they want to change society and if they want to have a more just, a more democratic society, then they need to fight side-by-side with women for women's rights." "CHANTING" "The political voices of women are also emerging in Africa." "Despite engrained cultural oppression, women are seizing the initiative and campaigning from the grassroots." "Fighting ended in Liberia in 2003 after women took up residence in a fish market, praying and singing for peace." "It grew into a campaign of thousands and resulted in the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president in the continent's post-colonial history." "Malawi followed in 2012, when Joyce Banda was sworn in as president." "And in South Africa, Lindiwe Mazibuko became the first black woman to lead the parliamentary opposition in the National Assembly, yet so far these are isolated successes that are not without their setbacks." "How did people react to you when you became a woman in power?" "South Africa has one of the best gender representations in politics in the world." "Almost 40% of cabinet ministers, judges, members of parliament, are women." "Sometimes it gives us the false impression that women have come so far that we are on an equal footing with men in politics but what's interesting about being a woman in power is that it threatens the status quo so much that people go to a lot of trouble" "to pull you down and attack you for very spurious reasons." "Your hair, your clothing, your accent." "Things that would never happen to a man." "I see it all over the world, there's an effort to bring women back to their place and that's what I experienced." "Point of order is that before the Member continues, can she explain to the House what she's done to her hair?" "LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE" "The Honourable Mazibuko may be a person of some weight, but is she of some stature?" "Thank you." "The Honourable Lindiwe Mazibuko has bad fashion taste and has been arrested by the police, by the fashion police." "Blame Zuma." "Everything must be blamed on Zuma." "But the great thing about being a woman in representative politics is you get to break that mould and you show other women that we do have a place in the front line, we do have a place in power," "it's legitimate, we can exercise it well, formidably and better than many of our male counterparts." "Do you think there's a different kind of revolution taking place in Africa?" "A revolution that isn't led by violence but led by women through the politics of persuasion and economic empowerment?" "I think there's definitely a revolution in terms of economic empowerment." "There's a whole raft of studies about how women have become primary breadwinners in families throughout the continent by borrowing small sums of money to start businesses." "So there are women who, on a very small scale and very quiet way, are finding new and innovative ways to support the family." "So the future of Africa lies in the future of its women?" "Absolutely." "I think the future of Africa hinges upon whether Africa can wake up to the fact and wake up quickly enough to the fact that it will not succeed unless women succeed as well." "Worldwide, we have the choice to be participants or observers in the movement for women's equality." "At stake are the goals of autonomy, authority and agency for all women." "I think radical change is happening to women right now." "It's by no means universal and in some parts of the globe it's not even going in the same direction but nevertheless there is something wholly new about this revolution." "It's an uprising without bloodshed." "Women are challenging the status quo through awareness, through dialogue, through education." "What these revolutions have achieved is a global awareness of the importance of women's rights, but we cannot be complacent." "The United Nations, in spite of its chequered history, has a fundamental role to play in promoting global equality and its charter explicitly guarantees the rights of women." "Phumzile Mlambo" " Ngcuka, as executive director of UN Women, is leading the campaign to champion women's rights." "We will actively campaign for all sections of society to take part and to commit to end violence against women." "I don't think that women have an ambition to dominate anyone, they just want their space and they want respect and they also want to respect the other people we share the planet with." "In many countries, the education systems is still full of gender stereotypes." "This is learned behaviour and it can be unlearned." "We just need to work harder." "I believe that there's a revolution happening and it's going to take place around women." "Their equality, their participation, and through them it will make the world a more secure and prosperous place." "If you do not have women, we will not have this prosperity because it is just like getting into a field and playing with half of the squad sitting on the bench." "The most critical issues of the 21st century will need us to address gender equality." "Across the millennia, women have had to fight every step of the way to achieve the same basic rights as men." "Access to power, freedom of movement and the right to self-determination." "For many, this is still an ongoing struggle today." "I believe that the future depends on the inclusion of women." "And to do this, we have to break from the past and create a new model for social revolution." "It's now time to recognise that the world was made by men and women." "And though, for women, their contribution was constrained by political, social and religious factors that did not exist in the same way for men, that does not alter the value of their contribution or diminish their impact." "It is vital for the future of society that we have a proper understanding of the past because once we accept that the history of women has no end point and is still in the process of being written, then we can be proud, we can be vigilant" "and we can be united in ensuring that the next revolution is the age of equality." "Interested in finding out more about world-changing women?" "The Open University has produced a collection of free postcards." "To order, call 0300 303 0265, or go to the website below and follow the links to the Open University."