YouSaid · the spoken record

Victoria Bateman

lines on the record: 37
first: 2025-08-21
most recent: 2025-08-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That is when our civilization stumbles. So, if we want to stay at the top of the global economic league tables, then we need to, I think, have a very different understanding of our past history in order to keep ourselves on track.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of not being equal to men in the workplace. And so I think we need to be extremely careful in terms of Western civilization today, in terms of not repeating that mistake. And I think certainly when you look at some of the rhetoric of social conservatives that perhaps trumpet this idea that a woman's natural place is in the home, that women working in the economy is just a 20th century and 21st century thing. It's an aberration and we'd be a whole lot better if women were back in the home as they were for apparently for much of history. I really want to break that myth to show that no, a woman's natural place is not in the home. It has always been a longside men at the heart of the economy. And when we fail to realize that,”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think the economy has never been just for men. And I think with that, we have to make sure that we do not repeat what has been the greatest mistake of human history, a mistake that the Romans made, a mistake that the Islamic Empire made, a mistake that Imperial China made. And that is to fail to understand how much women contribute to our economies and with that to sideline and marginalize them. Because when I look in economic or at the rise and decline of civilizations, what I find in every instance is every successful economy in its own particular period of history was one where women were there working hard alongside men at the heart of the economy and it subsequently Its subsequent decline involved a process of pushing women out of paid work and into the home, pushing them into the roles of being pregnant and protected.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before the 18th century, if we look at, say, the Royal Exchange right next to the Bank of England, almost 50% of the retail space there at the end of the 17th century was rented by women. So again, it would be wonderful to actually delve into the rent books and find out more about more about these women. So I think that's just a taste perhaps of some of the curiosity that some of these fabulous historical sources have left me with.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Question our assumption about what women were doing at that time, I think is a fabulous resource. And one of the things I'd love to do in my spare time is to really look in more detail at the addresses on these business cards and try to identify precisely where in London each of these women had their shops or their workshops, their places of work. And this was a time before street numbers. So actually the addresses on these business cards are a little bit obscure. You can find me by the boot sign next to such and such a pub or next to such and such a church. And it would be wonderful actually to try to identify precisely where these women in the 18th century had their shops and workshops. And I mean, even pushing back.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think probably one of my favorite finds whilst doing the research was a collection of business cards or trade cards held in the British Museum that date to the 18th century. And this collection includes the business cards of so many female entrepreneurs. So we have, for example, from 1735, the business card of a lady shoemaker called Anne Askew. And she makes and sells shoes for men and women. She says she exports them across the colonies. So she's an international businesswoman. And she is not unique. There are so many other women with business cards in this collection from the 18th century toy makers, fan makers, hat makers, silversmiths. Goldsmiths, cabinet makers. And so I think that type of find that really helps to”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Value that women in that sector are creating for us and our wider economy. And then at the same time, because it's labelled female, it's a sector that has difficulty recruiting men. And I think if as a society men and women were truly equal, then a sector that was labelled female wouldn't have problems attracting men. It has problems attracting men is because women's work is perhaps seen as inferior to men's work and therefore men don't want to be seen as doing jobs that are seen as these inferior jobs. And so that's a shame. And so I think, again, stereotypes need to be broken when it comes to the health and care sector in the same way as the tech sector so that we can perhaps work towards a future where men and women are equally attracted to these different parts of the economy.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They tend to be seen as extensions of the types of unpaid work that women do within the home, looking after children, looking after elderly parents, looking after your family when they're sick. And because they're seen as natural extensions of women's work within the home, they're seen as perhaps not very skilled as something that women can just naturally magically do. And because we can naturally magically do it, we don't deserve much in the way of reward because, hey, any woman could do that. So I think there is a problem in terms of that type of work sadly being seen as unskilled and with it attracting low rates of pay in a way that perhaps is exploiting the”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is not only that when we look at history in its early days, tech was actually, there were a lot of women there, but also when you look at other parts of the world today, so say Asia and Eastern Europe, computer science and tech is much more gender equal than it is here in Western Europe or in the US. There's no reason why tech has to remain male dominated. It's just perhaps that it has become stereotyped as male, and that stereotype needs to be broken. And then by contrast with the tech sector, we have the health and care sector, which is very much dominated by female employees. And one of the risks with that is because Those types of jobs become labelled as women's jobs. It was women's work.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so there you have women behind the scenes doing this really hard work of computer programming at a time when there weren't computer science degrees. You know, these women are self-taught. And tech meet, where you have, for example, smaller pharmaceutical companies developing, filling the gaps that they feel the big pharmaceutical giants are missing in terms of developing medicines and drugs that they feel are being overlooked. And then in turn hoping to sell those on to the big pharma companies, that biotech is much more gender balanced than tech more widely. And so I think that's where you're seeing quite a lot of opportunities for women, quite a lot of really exciting business opportunities there. But the fact that that works at the interface of tech suggests that one of the potential obstacles down the road is that lack of flow of women through the tech industry. I think one of the things, though, I'm quite hopeful about”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So it's really interesting you've chosen these two sectors because they're kind of diametrically opposed in terms of their gender balance. So tech remains heavily male dominated. Now, it wasn't always like that. So of course in its early days, computing was very much associated with women. And not only, for example, the wonderful Lovelace, but also people like Mary Coombs, Mary Coombs, who worked on one of the first business software systems. Women were there providing what was really quite labor intensive work, programming early software systems. And one of those first programs was for Lion's Tea Rooms. And the program was really designed to make sure that Lions Tea Rooms never ran out of tea and cake.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, people might not read Newton's Principia Mathematica, but they might want to read pride and prejudice, they might want to read a book on botany, they might want to read a history of the British Empire or something like that. And women are filling that gap that is being left by male writers. So I think even though sadly throughout history, what you find as in a sense institutions develop and become increasingly rigid, like universities or guilds or societies, you get increasingly women locked out. You also find that women are challenging that, identifying gaps, filling them, and really through that contributing to our economy.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Doing is saying actually, we're not just going to cater to an elite group, we are going to take charge here and write books for ordinary people for the wider population. And in fact, Priscilla Wakefield, in addition to establishing that first bank for women and children, she also wrote 17 books and they included, for example, an educational book on botany that was widely published and widely read. And I think by providing this type of educational material and manuals and also novels, you know, reading that we want to do for entertainment, though I would say economic history is equally entertaining as a Jane Austen, but perhaps not everyone would agree with that. What women are doing by providing these types of books is providing a reason for ordinary people to learn to read and write.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Setting in train the whole development of saving banks for, you know, for ordinary people. And then we have when it comes to the creative industries, when it comes to writing, whilst men are locked in their ivory towers of places like Oxford and Cambridge, where women are not welcome, what's happening is beyond there, women are saying, well, actually, there isn't just a market for academics when it comes to books. There is a market for ordinary people. Now, the average family might want to read and write. They might want a home schooling book of some kind. People working in different types of craft-based jobs might want to manual to help them with their work. And so what women are doing”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are, in a sense, locked out of parts of the economy that become increasingly male-dominated, such as banking or writing. The way that women are so astute when it comes to identifying the gaps in the market that are left by men. So male bankers, for example, they're focusing on wealthy clients, on aristocratic families, providing mortgages for big country houses, providing finance for male merchants. And what Priscilla Wakefield is doing is saying, hang on a minute here, there are all these ordinary people out there that want to save, want a safe place in which to save something, you know, other than a pot under their bed, why aren't we providing financial services? And so she's spotting this gap in the market, taking the situation. Into her own hands. And setting up this bank, and with it actually almost single-handedly”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are so many examples, it's so difficult to choose, Julia Felix from Roman Pompeii, who was in a sense the, if we think of Donald Trump as the property developer of New York, then I would say Julia Felix was his equivalent for Roman Pompeii. So she had this wonderful development with apartments and with a whole recreational and entertainment complex, beautiful gardens for her clients, bathhouse, of course, where men and women could take the famous Roman baths. So I think Julia Felix certainly one of my favorites. Priscilla Wakefield absolutely, I mean, she was the female JP Morgan, setting up the first bank for women and children. And I think what is so interesting about women like that is how when”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They stand up to the economic crisis at the time and they take action. There are both efforts to, for example, disrupt imperial transport systems and telegraph systems and so on. But then there are also joyous public protests involving singing and dancing and even pulling up your skirt to reveal your bottom to the imperial authorities to tell them what you think of them. So this, I think, shows that women, you know, we're not just victims in history, that we really do fight to maintain our rights and freedoms. And I think that tradition of women being merchants and being very much involved in the buying and selling of cloth, for example, in West Africa is one that has a legacy still. Still today.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“in this international trade and get to the roots of it themselves and say, you see, increasingly female merchants being pushed out of this and as colonial activity starts to really penetrate inland out of the coastal areas. And then, of course, as political systems of control are set up, very much appointing men into leadership roles. And so this tradition of these market queens really dies a death. And men are the people appointed and put in charge. But of course, this doesn't happen without backlash. And women are really fighting to maintain their rights. And that includes, for example, in 1929 in the midst of the Great Depression, when Ibo women stand up to British imperial authority.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traders first arrived, therefore it was women that they were trading with, and of course colonial people initially stayed relatively coastal. And then over time worked in land and wanted to take over land and in South African mines and so on. But initially there was this coastal trade and so there was initially almost a boom period really for these on the ground female traders and merchants. But what happens over time is that as the male colonial merchants want to push further in land, they want to really take charge of that trade that's happening and get to the roots of where is the food coming from, where is the cloth coming from, rather than buying things through these female traders, they want to in a sense cut out the middle women.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yes. So if we think about, for example, you know, all of those sailors and captains and merchants that were leaving British ports and heading to West Africa to places like Nigeria today, I mean, these were parts of the world where women were really active in the marketplace, where women were appointed as the market queens in charge of the markets. And if you were a man and you found yourself in a market buying things for your family, then people would look at you as if you were, you know, an alien, as if you had, you know, no woman to represent you in the marketplace. Something must be wrong. So certainly in West Africa, there was this strong tradition of women being the people in charge of the marketplace. And when colonial”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To, in a sense, through exchange and trade, be collaborative in that sense in order to get what we need to survive, in order to make sure that that roof over our head is fixed, in order to make sure we've got the food we need for the dinner table, the cloth we need for our clothing and whatever else.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And your own little family, you can't do everything for yourself, so you can't be entirely self sufficient. Whereas if you imagine a kind of multi-generation family, you can do a lot in-house. You know, you can even have your own system of defense, kind of mafia style where you have some of the big muscular members of the family that provide the defense for the whole family unit. You can't mend your roof and provide for your defence and look after your own food and so on if you're one little nuclear family and say what happens in British society is that families have to in a sense build trust with one another. They have to trade with one another. And so this all helps to support the development of markets in the economy because we have”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're brought up in that kind of society, then in a sense you're not socialized, you're not nurtured to be questioning, to have your opinion heard, to speak up. And all of those things are really vital, not just for democracy to become established, but for democracy to be sustained because we know that democratic institutions, political institutions really are only sustained if as citizens we are outspoken and we say what we think and we question each other rather than being used to taking orders. And I think the final thing that this type of society leads to because young women are out there and setting up their own little nuclear families rather than Being part of an extended multi generational family structure.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More equal within marriage than more traditional societies where girls are married off young, I think this actually acts as a model for our political institutions because in a sense political institutions mirror what is going on within the home. So if you're in a family”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Children sadly from 13, 14 onwards because these families are smaller in Britain, families are better able to afford to educate at least some of their children such as through an apprenticeship or through reading and writing lessons and also families are better able to save and that in turn helps to provide funds for family businesses or for lending those savings to within your net social network to support other businesses out there in the economy and I think also that the fact that young women are taking charge of their lives in this sense they're outworking they have this financial independence they are much”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that in turn helps to support an economy with higher wages and a higher standard of living than would otherwise be the case. And that in turn helps to encourage businesses to mechanize because you can't simply rely on super cheap labor in order to produce things. So you literally have to invent machines and adopt those machines and use those machines. So make the process of production more productive because you simply can't get away with just relying on cheap labor. Now in addition because these families are smaller compared with societies in which women are married off at a young age have no choice about who they marry and so in turn end up producing children.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was her mid twenties, which is remarkably modern when you think about particularly when you think about life expectancy at the time. And I argue that this had a number of positive effects on the economy, some of which might seem relatively indirect but were extremely powerful. One is that because women are marrying later in life, they're having smaller families. And those smaller families means that they, that population never goes wild. Now, population certainly grows, for example, during the Industrial Revolution quite a lot, but it never goes wild to the point that it overwhelms the capacity of the economy to support the population in a way that creates a subsistence crisis.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're working, they are saving some of their income, they wait to marry until they find someone of their own choosing. And then if they do decide to take that step and marry, because they're used to that degree of independence, they want to set up their own household with their partner rather than be absorbed into their parents-in-law's home. And to set up that independent household, you have to be patient. You have to work hard, you have to save. And so what we typically find looking at these centuries before the Industrial Revolution is not only a young woman working, earning money, they are also postponing marriage until their mid-20s. So the average age at which an ordinary woman got married in Britain in the 1500s, 1600, 1700s,”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To work outside of the home, to go out and work in fields as dairy maids, in domestic service, and even to take on apprenticeships. And I think this was extremely important in the sense that it gave them a degree of financial independence. And what that financial independence did crucially was it allowed them to take charge of one of the most important decisions that affects a woman's life, including her future economic potential, and that is marriage. So because young women had their own degree of financial independence, it meant that they were better able to decide for themselves whether, when and who to marry. And so they're out there in the workforce.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out is I think when we look at the roots of the Industrial Revolution, I think we have to go back to at least the medieval period. And what really stands out when we look at the historical sources from the 1300s, 1400s right the way through to the 1800s is the degree to which it was normal for teenage girls and young women to go out to work.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things you argued you were just talking about what a rich and powerful society we are now kind of relatively speaking, what a rich society we are. But of course a lot of people won't feel very rich right now. And one of the things you argue is that in societies where women and ordinary people are more empowered, then you get a more successful dynamic economy. And so I want to talk a little bit more about those ideas. And in particular, the starting point, I think, for a big bit of that argument is something people are very familiar with, the Industrial Revolution. And you argue that women's freedoms have been really overlooked and understanding how Britain ends up at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in Northern Europe. Could you talk a bit more about that? Yeah, yeah. So I think the Industrial Revolution has roots that go back to at least the medieval period. And I think certainly when we look at historical sources, one of the things that really stands”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what potential problems we could encounter in the future? How do we as a society remain rich and successful and avoid the fate that other great societies, great civilizations have suffered, I think for that I really wanted to push things back and to draw parallels between, say, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, the Islamic Empire, the imperial China, and then the rise of the Western world. And that present day perspective, that sense of how we can inform where we are today and where we might be going is really central to the book, I think, which is really, really interesting. Historians are sometimes shy away from making conclusions, but you are trying to offer lessons, aren't you, specifically? And that's really interesting because one of”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think history is one of those things that to try and understand the present, you delve into the last century, and then you delve into the century before that, and then the century before that. And then before you know it, you're right at the, you know, at the beginning of time. So it is this kind of endless quest for the roots. And in the processing, that continuity and change, you know, those two things that as historians, we recognize. I mean, my own speciality is really in the economic history of Europe and particularly since medieval times through to the present day. And most of what I've taught over the past 20 years has really been very much surrounding the British industrial revolution. This period when Britain moved to the top of the global economic league tables in a sense.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How many female merchants, bankers, and industrialists from the past can you name? And there are actually so many fabulous women in economic history that sadly have been hidden whose stories have been lost. And I wanted to write an economic history of the world from the Stone Age to the present day that featured not just the lives of men, but also the lives of women. And what I didn't want to do was just to append existing global economic histories with a kind of few lines at the end of a chapter on, oh, this is what women were doing. Littered here and there because I do think the whole is more than the sum of its parts. So once we, in a sense, add women and stir our whole understanding of the past, our whole understanding of economic history changes forever.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How little women seem to be written into this story. When we think about the names of the people that feature in the rise and decline of civilizations, in the economic history of Britain, it's typically meant that we think of, you know, whether that is figures like Genghis Khan and Henan Cortez and Henry Ford, JP Morgan, the Rothschilds, Rockefeller, Roosevelt, Reagan, Arkwright, what, you know, it could go on so many of these heroic or otherwise, you know, male figures that are seen as the movers and shakers of economic history for good or for bad. And really, I think I want to pose this question.”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Britain was on the periphery of the global economy and, in fact, Europe was on the periphery of the global economy. So we were a backwater to a backwater. And for millennia, it was other parts of the world that were super successful. So whether that's the Middle East, India and China. I think also Unique delving into the past to understand rise and decline why is it that in history we've had these super successful, super wealthy civilizations, but that then end up on the scrap heap of history. So what drives countries to be successful, how can they continue to flourish? That is the question that has driven me for 20 years or more. But I think what's interesting is”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I've always been fascinated by one question in particular, and that is, why are some countries rich and others poor? So in other words, why do people in some countries live in relative comfort whilst people in others struggle simply to survive? And really it's that question that first drove me to study economics and then to move into economic history. And then in turn, to write Econica. So I'm really passionate about economic history in particular. I really believe that by delving into the past, we can try and understand the recipe of economic success. We can try and understand why it was that a country like Britain went from poverty to prosperity. For much of history,”
2025-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · Who are the Hidden Women who Shaped our Economic History? With Victoria Bateman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT