Germaine Greer is a female activist, academic and author who has never lost sight of her power to act and speak on controversial issues. Read her story and consider the challenge that follows.
Female Leaders: Germaine Greer
Germaine was born in 1939, in Melbourne, Australia. She attended a private convent school, Star of the Sea College, before continuing her education at Melbourne and then Sydney universities. She taught at the University of Sydney and was active with the ‘Push’ (a libertarian group) before gaining a scholarship to attend Cambridge. In 1964 she left Australia for the UK, where she studied at the all‐women’s Newnham College. She gained her PhD in 1968. She joined the Cambridge Footlights, which acted as a link with London’s arts and media scene, and she started to write for publications such as Private Eye and Oz and was the editor of the Amsterdam underground magazine Suck.
In 1968 Germaine took a post as a lecturer at the University of Warwick. The same year she married an Australian journalist, Paul de Feu, but the marriage only lasted three weeks, during which she later admitted she was unfaithful several times. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973. In 1970 Germaine had success with the publication of The Female Eunuch, a book on the subject of female sexuality and the subjugation of women. It claimed that women were indoctrinated into western society, with girls feminised from childhood, and women forced to embrace stereotypical roles and develop a sense of shame about their bodies, lose their political autonomy and end up powerless, isolated, with diminished sexuality and lives lacking in joy.
The book won critical and popular acclaim and in 1972 Germaine resigned from Warwick to travel the world speaking about and promoting the book. She also presented the comedy show Nice Time with Kenny Everett and Jonathan Routh. She was arrested in New Zealand for using obscene language in a speech and was controversially fined.
In 1989 she moved back to the UK and took a post as a special lecturer and fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge. However, she resigned in 1996 after a conflict about her opposition to the appointment of a transsexual person to the fellowship of the college.
Germaine has been active in the media for much of her life and continues to appear on television and in print.She has written a number of other books, including The Obstacle Race: Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work (1979) and Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), which offers a critique of the western world’s attitudes to sexuality, family and fertility. In 1986 she published Shakespeare, then The Madwoman’s Underclothes: Essays and Occasional Writings, and in 1989 she produced a book about her father, Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. In The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991) she suggested that women are frightened into using hormone replacement therapy by predictions of crumbling bones, heart disease, loss of libido, depression, despair, disease and death if they let nature take its course. The book concluded that fear makes women comply with schemes, treatments and politics that work against their interests. In 1999 she published The Whole Woman as a follow‐up to The Female Eunuch. The Beautiful Boy (2003) is a controversial art history book about teenage boys, in an attempt to advance women’s reclamation of their capacity for – and right to – visual pleasure. In 2007 she published Shakespeare’s Wife, about Anne Hathaway.
Germaine has been outspoken on many issues, including the plight of Aboriginal Australians, transsexual and intersex people and their sexual orientation, the death of wildlife expert and conservationist Steve Irwin, suburban Australia and reality television. In spite of negative comments about shows such as BigBrother, she appeared for five days on the UK programme Celebrity BigBrother and some spin‐off programmes in 2005.
Germaine Greer’s writing has had a profound impact on women’s rights and women’s liberation and has kept a focus on feminist issues into the 21st century. Recently she was included in the Prospect magazine list of the ‘World’s top 100 thinkers’. She is now retired, but maintains a presence in print and television media and continues to advocate on feminist issues.
Challenge: Germaine Greer has courted and flirted with controversy most of her academic and adult life. Was this necessary for her to gain a voice in the public debate about women’s place in society and how women are perceived? How do you make your voice heard? Are there other ways to be heard?