I have never, in 30 years of writing, worked so hard on each phrase, sentence, paragraph and chapter of a story as I have on News from the Squares. I’m not saying this to big-up the book or imply that it will be a world changing work of genius, it’s just the subject matter is very challenging. A world like ours only run by women.
It’s challenging to a man of my generation because I was born into the patriarchal paradise of post war Britain, a man’s role was not questioned, a generation of men, my fathers generation, had made incredible sacrifices, shown unimaginable bravery and experienced such brutality and loss that it was felt by society in general they deserved their position of dominance.
However by the time I was in my late teens and early twenties, those easily held assumptions were being forcefully challenged by the daughters of those same men born after the war.
Women who are now in their fifties and sixties were at the forefront of the ‘feminist’ movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, they were vocal, challenging, assertive and argumentative. They didn’t accept the patriarchal norm they had been presented with, I believed then and I still believe now this was the biggest challenge established western culture has faced. Feminism changed the world more profoundly and with longer-term consequences than any other political movement I’ve lived through. I put no value judgement on that assertion, it is just an observation on the world we live in now in comparison to the world we lived in then.
What has surprised me in writing News from the Squares is that in order to imagine a world where women dominate the political and administrative world, I’ve had to think about the role of men in great detail. Not only ‘what would they do,’ but ‘how would they react?’
In order to make this world at least plausible enough I’ve had to read a great deal of current political thinking on this subject. I’ve combed through surveys of global educational results and seen why politicians are genuinely concerned about what’s going on. The swing from the dominance of men in all stages of education to the mirror opposite of the dominance of women is nothing short of astounding. Over the last 30 years it has more than reversed, the number of men who are driven and determined to ‘get to the top’ is shrinking globally at an alarming rate, the number of women filling that void can only be described as explosive.
By coming up with the notion of ‘what would happen if women ruled the world’ in an almost flippant way when planning this book, I am realising more and more that it is anything but a flippant suggestion. It’s appears to be happening now and it seems to be happening fast.