Meryl Streep: ‘Women’s Issues Are Men’s Problems’
Meryl Streep talks ‘Suffragette’ at Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit in London. (Photo: Instagram)
At Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit in London on Thursday night, Suffragette star Meryl Streep took the stage along with the film’s producer, Alison Owen, and director, Sarah Gavron. I watched on as the women discussed what early 20th century feminists like Emmeline Pankhurst (Streep’s character in the film and a leader of the movement in Great Britain) would think of the state of women’s issues today.
Historian Simon Schama moderated the panel and posed this question: If the suffragettes were here today to see the women in the world, what would they say to us? “Don’t give up the fight,” Streep told the audience filling Cadogan Hall. “It’s not over.” As far as progress goes, Streep believes they would be thrilled. “It’s astonishing. Think of what the world was like in 1913 — the marriage age was 12. When a girl got married she lost her name and everything she owned, from her combs to her shoes. Any money that she brought to the marriage was his and any children were his. She could leave him and run away but she had no agency, she had no choice…This describes many places in the world right now. But — half of people in law school in America are women, more than half in medical school. We are making incursions in business; we are coming up from the bottom. It’s just that upper echelon [that] we haven’t broken through.” Finishing her answer to a roar of applause, Streep said, “Women’s issues are men’s problems.”
It was a powerful statement to come at the end of a night that included interviews with inspiring women like Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, who shared insight into how her country is dealing with millions of war refugees, Vian Dakheel Saeed, a Yazidi Representative in the Iraqi Parliament who spoke about the sexual violence of the Islamic State, and Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s Federal Minister of Defence, who touched on her role in global security. I think the suffragettes would be more than proud of the work that these astonishing women are doing today.
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