Why do Brits have a problem with clever females?

Mary Beard scandal suggests Britain’s attitude to successful women is ‘broken’

Mary Beard
(Image credit: BBC)

WHY do we have a problem with clever women? Following the furore over Mary Beard, whose appearance on BBC's Question Time caused an online torrent of misogynistic bile, some are questioning if Britain's attitude to intelligent women is broken.

For former Radio 4 newsreader Alice Arnold, many Brits are simply incapable of coping with clever women. She compares the experience of Beard, a classics professor at Cambridge, with the online reaction sparked by her fellow – male - academics David Starkey and Simon Schama.

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Dina Rickman is former associate editor at TheWeek.co.uk.