Award-winning writer Angela Saini gives this year’s Wollstonecraft Society Lecture, sharing from her hotly-anticipated book The Patriarchs.

Join us as Angela reveals the true roots of gendered oppression, and the complex history of how male domination became embedded in societies across the globe. Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you are. Despite the push back against sexism and exploitation in our own time, even revolutionary efforts to bring about equality have often ended in failure and backlash. Saini examines what part every one of us plays in keeping patriarchy alive, and asks that we look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists.

Meet our speakers and chair

Angela Saini is an award-winning British journalist and author based in New York. She presents radio and television programmes, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, New Scientist, and Wired. She was a spring 2022 Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow and a 2022 fellow of the Humboldt Residency Programme in Berlin.

Bee Rowlatt (@BeeRowlatt) is a writer and public speaker, and a programmer of events at the British Library. Her most recent book In Search of Mary retraced Wollstonecraft’s 1795 treasure hunt over the Skagerrak Sea. She led the campaign for the Wollstonecraft memorial sculpture and is chair of the human rights education charity, the Wollstonecraft Society. 

Alpa Shah (@alpashah001) is Professor of Anthropology and ‘Global Economies of Care’ research programme leader at LSE International Inequalities Institute. She is the author of Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas, a finalist for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, the New India Book Foundation Prize and winner of the 2020 Association for Political and Legal Anthropology Book Prize.

More about this event

This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The International Inequalities Institute (@LSEInequalities) at LSE brings together experts from many LSE departments and centres to lead critical and cutting-edge research to understand why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address these challenges.

The Wollstonecraft Society (@TheWollSoc) aims to carry Mary Wollstonecraft’s legacy of human rights and equality into the lives of people who don’t know her work. Its goals are to increase awareness of her legacy, and inspire community engagement.

You can order the book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule? (UK delivery only) from our official LSE Events independent book shop, Pages of Hackney.

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEWollstonecraft

Podcast & Video

A podcast of this event is available to download from Patriarchy: where did it all begin?

A video of this event is available to watch at Patriarchy: where did it all begin?

Podcasts and videos of many LSE events can be found at the LSE Public Lectures and Events: podcasts and videos channel.