Jude Kelly on women, equality and the rise of the world's 'strong men'
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 March 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Krishnan Guru-Murthy sits down with Jude Kelly, founder of the Women of the World (WOW) Foundation, to talk about the rise of traditional values in global politics, equitable education and the arts and whether the divine really is 'a bloke'.
Kelly, a theatre director and former artistic director of the Southbank centre in London, reflects on her experiences challenging entrenched patriarchal values while growing up as an Irish immigrant in England; how she feels our financial, legal and religious norms have placed men in charge of society and what to do about it; the recent resurgence of traditional values and strongman politics; and why community-driven change is the real key to creating a more just and equitable society.
Produced by Silvia Maresca.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian Giri Murphy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them. |
| 0:13.3 | My guest this week decided she wanted to be a theatre director very early on in life and has spent a whole lifetime as a leading light of the arts in Britain. |
| 0:22.5 | She ran the South Bank Centre in London, amongst many things, but then she stopped and founded |
| 0:28.2 | something called the Women of the World Festival, which is a network of global festivals, |
| 0:33.1 | celebrating the achievements of women and also highlighting the obstacles they face. |
| 0:37.6 | She has also just been made the new master of St Catherine's College, Oxford, so she's entering academia as well. |
| 0:43.9 | Jude Kelly, welcome to ways to change the world. |
| 0:46.3 | Thank you. |
| 0:48.8 | How would you change the world? |
| 0:51.3 | I would change the way that we viewed education at every level of society. So I would |
| 0:59.3 | start with the idea that we could solve an awful lot of problems if we did prevention rather than |
| 1:05.9 | action after the problem. And I would start with family education because I believe that the family is still |
| 1:16.1 | the driving force for change in a child's life. And I would start with the idea that, you know, |
| 1:23.2 | the justice within a family structure, how a man and a woman are equal, or if it's same |
| 1:28.6 | sex, how the partners are equal, how the children are equal, and how they benefit from the |
| 1:36.4 | idea that the children need to learn different kinds of social skills, maybe their parents |
| 1:41.2 | learned, different kinds of ways of conducting healthy relationships. |
| 1:45.7 | So I would pour a lot more effort into that nuclear family as a start in terms of education. |
| 1:51.9 | Then I would spread out from that into society generally to educate on everything from health, |
| 1:58.6 | violence, money, all the things that humans need to lead a sane, intelligent, |
| 2:06.1 | and humorous life, I would imply, or do an education at grassroots level all across the board. |
| 2:15.3 | Because I think at the moment what we're doing is we retrospectively educate people. |
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