Normal Women

4. Normal Women...are underpaid

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Episode notes

Whether you are on the Board or in the kitchen, a medieval peasant or modern day medic, a Victorian street-sweeper or eighteenth century hand-spinner - if you are a woman, there’s every chance you are underpaid. So why is that? Explanations vary across the centuries from women's lack of upper-body strength to the demands of motherhood and patriarchal oppression, but one thing is certain - the pay gap never closes.


Joining Philippa to discuss the history of women's work are:

  • Professor Jane Humphries, economic historian at the University of Oxford and London School of Economics and
  • data scientist Edwina Dunn, founder of the educational charity The Female Lead, which empowers and listens to women.


Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History is Philippa Gregory's radical retelling of our nation’s story – not of the rise and fall of kings and the occasional queen, but a history of the millions of women missing from the record: wives and workers, viragoes and angels, female husbands, priests and pirates.



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