Only the truth will set us free
TWO women have made headlines this week.
You, like me, may not have much in common with them.
Oprah Winfrey is one of the most famous women in the world, worth $3billion and now being touted as a possible next President. Carrie Gracie is an Oxfordeducated journalist who’s been earning £135,000 as the BBC’s China Editor. Our lives may be poles apart – but what they’ve said and what they have done this week matters to women wherever we work and whoever we are. Carrie Gracie has resigned from her job as China editor after discovering she was earning around £100,000 less than the North American editor John Sopel and around £50,000 less than the Middle East’s Jeremy Bowen. Which is about as fair as a Virgin rail fare. It seems Carrie’s bosses had consistently lied to her about her unequal pay. And if she hadn’t publicly exposed them they would still be doing it now. For Carrie, it has all been about “speaking truth to power”, to use the brilliant words of Oprah Winfrey in her Golden Globes’ speech. Oprah spoke of Recy Taylor, a black woman abducted in 1944 in Alabama and raped by six men who were never brought to justice.
Oprah said: “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”
Obviously there are huge differences in the stories of Recy Taylor, a rape victim betrayed by justice, and Carrie Gracie a journalist betrayed by her boss. But what unites them is how they can only be stopped by women speaking their personal truth to those in power.
And that is relevant to every single one of us.
Because be in no doubt… if the BBC, the most liberal, touchy-feely, hummus-eating organisation in Britain will shaft its women employees, then the chances are your boss will too.
And if men in Hollywood can get away with sexually abusing or humiliating successful, smart women, then so can men in your local pub.
Not all of them, of course. But where power over women persists, so will the perversion of that power.
But what we have now is hope, as Oprah said in her barnstorming speech, that change is coming.
And it really doesn’t matter if you’re a billionaire like Oprah in Los Angeles or a hard-up wage slave in Leicester.
For every woman’s weapon against power is speaking her truth. It’s time we use it. Loudly.
What we have now is hope that change is coming