Canberra Writers Festival: feminist science writer Angela Saini's advice for young people

Matildas fever left every Canberra pub completely booked out on Wednesday night, but the team's World Cup performances will have far more radical results than this.

Award-winning British science journalist and feminist Angela Saini is in town for the Canberra Writers Festival and she said what the Matildas represent is "incredibly profound".

Coming from a generation where girls could only netball or hockey while boys played soccer, she said a big boundary had been broken in terms of what is gender-appropriate. The Matildas are crushing the status quo not only through talent but their sheer popularity.

"People recognising that the skill of these women athletes is on a par with that of the men even though the game hasn't been at that level for the same amount of time," Saini said.

"I think that forces us to challenge ourselves about everything else. I mean the other ways in which we live in such rigidly gendered ways, these arbitrary divisions that we draw between what boys do and what girls do.

"They represent seed change in the way that we think about gender."

She said the patriarchy needed attacking on many fronts - politically, legally and also culturally. Even challenging subtle ways in which we perpetuate patriarchal ideas like wives taking their husbands names, which feels "completely innocuous" but is rooted deeply in patriarchal traditions.

"Lots of people do it ... just because we're used to them, they become part of customs, and we don't question them anymore," she said. "I would love it if we would just question everything much more than we do."

Her new book The Patriarchs: How Men Came To Rule debunks widespread assumptions about the origins of patriarchy. For example, men have "so much power" because they're on average slightly bigger and stronger.

"...that [assumption] doesn't fit with the evidence that we have both historically and scientifically about the human species," she said. "Number one, humans aren't universally patriarchal. There are a number of matrilineal society still out there in which men and women share authority."

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So, not to worry - the backlash in some parts of the world to securing abortion rights, trans rights, decriminalising homosexuality or even hating on the Barbie movie is perfectly natural.

"Whenever we try to challenge society, there's always going to be pushback," Saini said. "Those were also generations that maintained patriarchal systems that perpetuated them."

She has much faith in the younger generation who were not "taught" about gender in the same way and trusted them with transformative change.

"We have to, I think not be so frightened, of what might happen if we just let our children be themselves," she said.

The Canberra Writers Festival runs from 16-20 August. Get tickets at www.canberrawritersfestival.com.au

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