By Philip Baldwin
Helen King is an academic and author. She is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University. Prior to this she was Professor of the History of Classical Medicine and Head of Classics at the University of Reading. Helen is also an elected member of the Church of England’s General Synod, its governing body or parliament. Immaculate Forms, her most recent book, reflects on changing attitudes towards women’s bodies from the classical period to the modern day.
I began by asking Helen which women inspire her?
In my career, the most inspiring woman I’ve ever worked with is Professor Pat Easterling. She’s at Cambridge and a Classics specialist, which is my background as well. She was Vice-Principal of Newnham College when I was a research fellow. She was of that generation where women didn’t have maternity leave, so if you were going to have children and be an academic you had to make sure you had them in the summer holidays and then go back to work immediately. Despite those obstacles, she rose to be the Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, the only woman to have ever held that position. More recently, I want to mention Jen Gunter, who is a Canadian obstetrician and gynaecologist who works in America now and who is absolutely fearless in calling out the damage being done by changing policies on abortion and contraception.
Is there a woman in the Church of England who inspires you?
Someone in the Church of England would be Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London. She is in a situation where she is bishop to priests who don’t accept she’s even a priest, let alone a bishop. How do you work with people who don’t think, not just that you shouldn’t be in your job because you’re you, but you shouldn’t be in your job because you’re a woman? That must be so frustrating, to be rejected in your ministry by the people who you’re supposed to be looking after in their ministry. All three of these women challenge the status quo and are fearless in speaking out, which are qualities we should celebrate in women.
What challenges do women face in academia?
Academia is traditionally very male. Women weren’t even educated to degree level until the lifetime of my grandma. Just introducing a little difference in management style can be very challenging. It’s been within my lifetime that departments in universities have thought about not having a meeting at 4 pm, which is exactly when people who are parents, whether they’re men or women, have to pick up children from school. Flexible working has come within my career. Not all universities are friendly to academics who are parents or carers of children. While that isn’t just a challenge for women, it’s the presence of women in academia that has made people start to see it differently.
Can you tell us about your book Immaculate Forms?
Immaculate Forms is a history of the female body up to the present day, from the ancient Greeks onwards and it looks at four parts of the body – breasts, clitoris, hymen, womb. I put them in that order because I’m going from what you can be aware of just by looking at someone, because breasts can be emphasised or played down by clothing, but you’ve got no idea what someone’s womb looks like, let alone whether they’ve even got a womb. It’s going from outside to inside and therefore from parts of the body that historically need more imagination to think about them. I look at these parts through the lenses of medicine and religion, which in Western Europe have worked closely together to reinforce each other’s messages about what women’s bodies can and can’t do, what they should look like. Historically there hasn’t been simple progress, so I’m looking at key moments in the history of the body. There has been a fluid way to think about bodies, rather than a straight line from ignorance to knowledge. Throughout history there’s a basic oscillation between focusing on difference from men, and similarity with men.
Do you have a message for Women’s History Month?
Know your history, because things change, things develop, but also things can go backwards again. I’m a great fan of Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale and of the point that the progress we’ve made can easily be reversed. If that happens, it’s often the body which is used as the reason why we need to change so know the history of bodies, know that it’s not as straightforward as you might think and know your body anyway, because you need to understand how your body works and what different parts of your body are called if you are to keep it healthy. Above all, know your history and be ready to respond if things change for the worse.
Read more from our inspirational women here.
