The British Academy Lecture, delivered by Professor Anne Phillips FBA, on 1 February 2018 (venue: The British Academy).

Gender equality is often claimed as a core value of Western society, marking the distance travelled from earlier times or other lands.  Yet for a supposedly key principle,  it is taking an inordinate amount of time to realise itself; moreover, claiming gender equality as a key principle of modernity feeds into discourses about ‘Western values’ that we have good reason to distrust. 

As we celebrate the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the Peoples Act, which gave a qualified right to vote to women in Britain, Anne Phillips assesses claims about equality being part of the ‘inner logic’ of modernity.

Professor Anne Phillips FBA is the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics. She is a leading contributor to feminist political theory, including through such works as 'The Politics of Presence, Multiculturalism without Culture', and 'The Politics of the Human'. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.

British Academy Lecture 2018

Anne Phillips on Gender and Modernity

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