A recording of a debate at the Battle of Ideas festival 2018 in London on Saturday 13 October.
What does it mean to be a woman? For some it’s about motherhood, others femininity, and some reject the whole idea of ‘womanhood’ outright. The Conservative Party’s proposed changes to the law around gender recognition have caused a fair amount of controversy around the question of what gender means and what it takes to be a woman. Is it about experience? Is it simply an identity which can be picked up by anyone? And, beyond the trans debate, is there anything worth defending in the idea of ‘womanhood’? Do women share a collective identity? What is a woman anyway?
SPEAKERS
HEATHER BRUNSKELL-EVANS
academic and writer; co-editor, Transgender Children and Young People
CHRISSIE DAZ
schoolteacher; cabaret performer; writer on transgender and gender variant identity
KATHY GYNGELL
co-editor, The Conservative Woman
JOANNA WILLIAMS
head of education and culture, Policy Exchange; author, Women vs Feminism; associate editor, spiked
#BattleFest2021: Girl, boy, other: how do we talk to kids about gender?
#BattleFest2021: Is it time to rethink the precautionary principle?
#BattleFest2021: Is levelling up really levelling down? The great inequality debate
#BattleFest2021: Racism and how to fight it
#BattleFest2021: The status of science after the pandemic
#BattleFest2021: The Irish border question
#BattleFest2021: Will green jobs save us?
#BattleFest2021: Can our data be used for good? The ethics of research
#BattleFest2021: Protection for me but not for thee? The equality conundrum
#BattleFest2021: Hate, heresy and the fight for free speech
#BattleFest2021: Feminism’s civil war
#BattleFest2021: From profits to prophets - why has big business gone woke?
#BattleFest2021: Is there a case for fossil fuels?
#BattleFest2021: A ’nudge’ too far? The rise of behavioural science and technocratic rule
#BattleFest2021: 20 years in Afghanistan - what happened?
#BattleFest2021: Who are we? Identity in crisis
#EducationForum: Teaching white privilege: making schools less racist or more divided?
#Arts&Society: Truth and politics in the theatre - in conversation with David Ireland
#InternationalSalon: From Covid to climate change: challenging the culture of fear?
#BattleFest2021: Is the NHS fit for purpose?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free