THE PATRIARCHS: How Men Came to Rule with Angela Saini

A CONVERSATION with ANGELA SAINI

‘By thinking about gendered inequality as rooted in something unalterable within us, we fail to see it for what it is: something more fragile that has had to be constantly remade and reasserted.’ - Angela Saini

For centuries, prominent thinkers have treated male domination among humans as natural or inevitable.

But how would our understanding of gender inequality look if we didn’t assume that men have always ruled over women?

In her bold and radical book, The Patriarchs , Angela Saini explores the roots of what we call patriarchy, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present.
Relying on research that stretches from the earliest known human settlements to contemporary gender issues, Saini makes the case that there was never anything inevitable about male domination, and that our history of gender and power dynamics is far more diverse, and fluid, than many people believe.

Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, 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 asks what part we all play – women included – in keeping patriarchal structures alive, and why we need to look beyond the old narratives to understand why it persists in the present.

Angela Saini will be interviewed on the night by our host Kevin, event organiser for Brighton Skeptics.
Angela's book The Patriarchs will be available to purchase at a special Brighton Skeptics discount (courtesy of City Books, Hove) and there will also be a signing session after the audience Q&A.

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist whose print and broadcast work has appeared on the BBC and in the Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, The Economist, and Science. A former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, she won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Kavli Science Journalism gold award in 2015. Saini has a master’s degree in engineering from Oxford University, and she is the author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story and Geek Nation: How Indian Science Is Taking Over the World.

Brighton Skeptics presentations take place upstairs in the Nightingale Room at the Grand Central, which is opposite Brighton Station.

• DOORS OPEN: 7:00pm
• INTERVIEW STARTS: 7:30pm
• AUDIENCE Q&A: 8:45pm
• BOOK SIGNING: 9:30pm
• This is a non-ticketed event, but we do ask a £4 donation on the door (£3 N.U.S.).

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