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00:00We thought that we should take the long view of women, money and power through the ages and to do it with the help of Dr. Victoria Bateman, who has taught economics at the universities of both Oxford and Cambridge for more than 20 years and who's written several books, the most recent of which published in the U.S. yesterday and in the U.K. in the middle of last month, feels like it was actually written for this event because it's Economica, a global history of women, wealth and power.
00:30And Victoria has really taken this immense work and, you know, looked at it as a proper global history and in depth.
00:39And so she's got much she wants to share. Victoria, now, some people here might remember that you are someone who's unafraid.
00:48In fact, you and I first spoke when you had a campaign against Brexit a few years ago, which you felt strongly enough about to end up taking your clothes off as part of a Brexit leaves Britain naked campaign.
00:58I share that because it shows you that Victoria doesn't mince her words or her thoughts.
01:03And essentially, while you are filling in the gaps about the unsung women who've been part of the global economy forever, you are also saying that essentially we have an inaccurate portrait of the development of the global economy because women are missing.
01:18So why why why seriously inaccurate?
01:20Well, from Henry Ford to JP Morgan, economic history is filled with men who have become household names.
01:31We assume that men have been the wealth creators of the past and that women have spent most of history as housewives.
01:41Now, that notion, the notion that women only entered the economy in the 20th century is, I think, one of the biggest myths of history.
01:56And it's one that economica aims to shatter women have never been the passive beneficiaries or victims of the wealth created by men.
02:08They have been active co-creators of wealth.
02:13And the book goes all the way back to the Stone Age, a time when I find 40 percent of big game hunters in the Americas were women.
02:23It then passes through the Bronze Age, a time when women were making the cloth that formed the currency of global trade that fueled the first international trade boom in history.
02:38Which is why you say women have absolutely been the pioneers and the founders, not only the associates or the wives or the supporters.
02:45Absolutely.
02:46And I know Victoria spent the whole day here, so she's followed every twist of the conference.
02:50And actually, she was looking at the agenda and making her own notes for how how we got to the point that was being discussed on the stage.
02:57So let's let's look at your premise then through some of the way that our day has been divided here.
03:04Women in banking. What should we know that we might not?
03:07Yes. So let me give you a couple of names of fabulous women that broke new ground.
03:14And Arianna de Rothschild earlier talked about shaking the established order.
03:21We've also heard from New Bank. We've heard from First Rand.
03:25You know, women doing amazing things, including, for example, in private credit, extending private credit to ordinary people.
03:36Now, women have always been doing that in banking and finance.
03:40And Priscilla Wakefield is one of my favourite characters.
03:44In 1798, here in London, she established the first English bank for women and children.
03:53She did so in Tottenham.
03:55Her first saver was a 14-year-old orphan girl who deposited just two pounds.
04:03Now, Priscilla Wakefield believed that business and philanthropy were complements.
04:11And actually talking to people in the break, one thing that has become apparent is that if you're working in banking or finance,
04:20sometimes people feel it should be shrouded in shame.
04:25You know, that you're that you're doing something that is associated with greed and self-interest.
04:30But actually, Priscilla Wakefield believed that banking and finance, extending capital markets to ordinary people,
04:39were a way of supporting people's economic independence, allowing them to save and invest in their future.
04:48So her bank became so popular that she even extended her bank accounts to men.
04:57That's very good of her.
04:59What happened to her bank?
05:00So it actually inspired a wave of other saving banks up and down the country until, in the 1860s,
05:13they were amalgamated together to form the Post Office Savings Bank,
05:18which then, in turn, was turned into National Savings and Investments.
05:22So very much the mother of...
05:24And there's another woman on the other side of the Atlantic, Maggie Walker.
05:28Maggie Walker.
05:29Tell us about Maggie Walker.
05:30That's right.
05:30So she was the daughter of an enslaved woman, born just after the American Civil War.
05:37Had a very, very difficult life.
05:40But again, much like Priscilla Wakefield believed that banking was the way to improve the lives of ordinary people,
05:50extending banking services.
05:52So she actually went on to establish St. Luke's penny-saving banks in Richmond, in Virginia,
06:02and particularly focusing on extending banking to the African-American community,
06:09a part of the community that were being underserved by the mainstream banks at the time.
06:15So both women doing exactly what Arianna de Rostral talked about, shaking the established order and making waves.
06:25So I think it's important to note that just like this has been a global event,
06:29we've had speakers from all over the world, your book is A Global History.
06:33So if we think about women as investors, what are the examples beyond the Western world?
06:38Yes.
06:39There have been one or two sessions today that have focused on particularly investing in the Middle East.
06:45It's been a hot topic of conversation during the breaks as well as during those sessions.
06:51And I think what's fascinating is women in the Middle East have always been active investors.
06:58And that's in part because historically they were expected to take charge to manage their dowries and their inheritances.
07:07So under Islamic law, a daughter was entitled to half of the inheritance that her brother received.
07:14In contrast to places like England where once you married, your husband essentially got your inheritance.
07:21Your husband took control of your property.
07:23So actually women as investors in the Middle East goes back a long way.
07:28Yeah.
07:29What were the most surprising things to you, Victoria?
07:31Because I imagine, I mean, you knew a certain amount going into this book.
07:35Yes, yes.
07:37Well, I think it is how whatever period of history you look and whatever part of the world, you always find women hard at work.
07:48They've never been simply sitting in the home, you know, looking after the children, looking after their husbands.
07:54They have always been hard at work.
07:58Whether it's building pyramids alongside men, whether it is plumbing in the ancient city of Rome, do you know that the proportion of plumbers that were women in ancient Rome was four times the number in the US and the UK today?
08:14So women are everywhere you look.
08:17But the difference in terms of what makes a flourishing economy and one that ends up on the scrap heap of history is whether women are free to make their own choices about the type of work that they do and whether they're free to keep the rewards.
08:37Yes. And you I mean, you make you make many big points about women's freedom and liberation and ownership throughout this book.
08:47And it's obviously a big theme. But but you're also, I think, telling us about cycles of boom and bust and how they can be linked to women's fortunes in particular societies at different points in time.
09:00That's right. I mean, ultimately, history is in economic terms, one long and repeated story of rise and decline.
09:11It's the story of one civilization after another, amassing great wealth before ending up falling into a ditch ready to be found by an unsuspecting archaeologist centuries down the line.
09:27But you cannot tell that story without including women, because as I show in the book, every successful civilization of its day has been one where women were at the heart of the economy and every subsequent civilizational collapse,
09:50whether that's whether that's the Romans, whether that's the Abbasid Middle East in the medieval period, whether it is pre and whether it is pre industrial China,
10:00that collapse has always been preceded by a process of sidelining women, restricting their economic freedoms.
10:11So there is, of course, a lesson in this, that if we want to stay at the top of the economic league tables, we should not repeat what has been the greatest mistake of human history.
10:27The way you put it here is that that rather than being one long march towards economic liberation for women, history has been a roller coaster ride.
10:34Success of economies was attributed solely to men, the astute rulers, the brave warriors, the savvy merchants and the creative geniuses that populate the history books.
10:44Legends developed that warned of uncontrollable women who distracted emperors, leaving their nation vulnerable to invasion or women who wreaked havoc Pandora style by refusing to obey.
10:55Absolutely. And you and you're saying you can see this time and time again in every part of the world that that nowhere was immune to this.
11:02Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, all economies face problems.
11:07You know, we will all face the winds and the storms that are thrown at us.
11:12Now, some people respond to that by saying the problem is women and let's crack down on their freedoms.
11:19Let's, for example, push up population growth rates by encouraging women to have more children and that will solve our that will solve our problems.
11:30And other people respond to it by saying, do you know what?
11:34To weather these storms, we need we need a more dynamic economy.
11:37And that means every individual being free to make the most of their talents, being free to make their own choices, being free to keep the rewards of their labour.
11:51So which direction you go in in response to economic challenges will take you veering off in one direction or another.
12:01Can I ask you to cast your expert eye on one more sector?
12:05Because there are obviously numerous offsuits.
12:07I know you found that over time women were institutional investors and investing in the railroads and all kinds of wonderful nuggets.
12:15Women in media, asking for a friend.
12:20What's the what's the long story there?
12:22Yes. So the creative industry of the 18th century was, of course, the book.
12:28And if anything, I would say the 18th century was the century of the novel and women were really supercharging the novel in the 18th century.
12:43So by the end of the century, 10 out of 12 of the top selling novelists were women.
12:51This includes, of course, people like Jane Austen.
12:54But women did have a difficult time getting published, getting the finance for their efforts in the way that, say, the lionesses and women's sports face challenges today.
13:07So there were three main ways of getting published as a woman writer in the 18th century.
13:13One was to sell the copyright to your work.
13:16But the problem was, if you were an unknown author, nobody really wanted to to stoke up the cash to invest in you.
13:24The second was a subscription model.
13:27So you present your novel to your friends and your family and your business network.
13:33And you say, would you like to invest in me by buying an advance copy?
13:38And if you can get enough people to agree to that, you can cover the costs of the printing and you can get your book out there.
13:45But this was a problem if you didn't have enough of a social network or you didn't have wealthy friends and family to draw upon or if you needed to remain anonymous as a woman, if writing risked bringing shame on your family, particularly if you wanted to write something radical like Pride and Prejudice that poked fun at society.
14:09So the third method, and this required immense risk taking, was the commission deal.
14:19Now, that essentially meant you covered the costs of your own printing and marketing.
14:25And then, if the book was successful, you split the profits with the printer such that you got 90% and they got 10%.
14:35Now, it's a high stakes game.
14:37If you were successful with your endeavors, you could make a great deal of money, but you had to have either deep pockets or to truly believe in yourself to stump up the capital initially.
14:51So that's the route that Jane Austen took with her first book, Sense and Sensibility.
14:57And it was amazingly successful to the point that then the publisher approached her and said, can I buy the copyright to Pride and Prejudice for the equivalent of £9,000 in today's money?
15:12Now, her appetite for risk changed.
15:17With the offer of money up front and not having to take the risk on her own writing, she took the deal.
15:26Now, if she had continued to take the risk, she would have made easily four or five times what she'd been offered.
15:35So perhaps Jane Austen was too risk averse.
15:37But, yeah, well, these are exactly the dilemmas that obviously continue and will continue in one form or other through the ages.
15:43Victoria, before we let you go, I'd just love to know what this book has changed in you.
15:48Does it mean that you walk around?
15:50I mean, we are in the heart of the city of London, the heart of the financial district.
15:53Do you walk around streets like this with different eyes?
15:56And tell us what you see as you walk around here.
15:59I do. I mean, I would say that there are two big long-term threats right now.
16:08One is to women and one is to business.
16:10So in terms of women, that threat that has been there throughout history, this belief in the minds of some that a woman's natural place is in the home.
16:22Now, the more that we can actually show that throughout history, that was not the case, then the more that makes me feel that we have the ammunition that we need to avert, say, the trad wife trend.
16:37And then the other threat is to business, because all of the time there are, you know, you face anti-capitalist vibes.
16:46There are people that try to argue that business only works in the interests of the minority and that it only works in the interests of men.
16:55But the more that we show that actually know throughout history, the reality is that business has always created opportunities for women, that there are female equivalents of Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan.
17:12And then the more we can, in a sense, again, protect ourselves from that threat that is a threat to, in a sense, our whole economic regime, you know, a liberal free market order.
17:29So so maybe you're parting thought to everyone here and everyone who's been part of this and a global finance conference with an entirely female speaker lineup is you've got this.
17:41You've always been doing this.
17:44Absolutely.
17:44Just carry on.
17:46Carry on.
17:47OK.
17:47Victoria Bateman, thank you so much.
17:50This is the book.
17:51It's absolutely wonderful.
17:52We all have a lot to learn from it.
17:55Thank you, Victoria, for being with us.
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