No matter how much the “family values” crowd wishes for women to “return home where they belong”, Linda Scott, renown expert on women’s economy and author of The Double X Economy, knows women’s economic empowerment has traversed past the point of no return. It is - in every way - too late. It is too late to force women out of the market economy and back into the private, domestic sphere - without widespread damage to all of society. Notably, a fact that is not stopping patriarchs from trying to shove women backwards.

In founding the concept of The Double X Economy, Linda revealed how women have been economically subjugated across the world and throughout history, demonstrating through extensive data and on-the-ground research how women have been systematically excluded from the entire financial order. Linda opens our eyes to the economic injustices women are subjected to around the globe, from corporate offices to rural farms, far beyond being denied paid work or being exploited for unpaid labor.

In this episode, Elle talks to Linda about patriarchy’s most powerful and enduring tool used to keep women out of power and away from agency - economic exclusion - and why it is that gender inequality is such a bad economic strategy, and gender equality is a perfect recipe for success - regardless of culture.

We talk about the far-reaching consequences of shutting women out, as well as the equally far-reaching positive impacts of lifting the constraints on women, also about our Chimpanzee-Bonobo deep past, our very dark present, and the exciting new project Linda is working on.

EPISODE LINKS

The Double X Economy

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

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email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

In 2026 the global surrogacy industry will grow to over 30 billion dollars. The manufacturing plants and raw materials that make this massive business possible are women's bodies, and the products being bought and sold are human babies.

This hugely profitable industry can only exist if a subset of women offer themselves up for highly invasive, completely unnatural, risky, and life-altering medical procedures resulting in pregnancy and birth, or alternatively “egg-harvesting” - all with little to no legal protection or oversight.

What motivates women to become surrogate mothers? What motivates women to have their eggs extracted for other women to “use”? What and who are the drivers behind the normalization of surrogacy?

We know that money plays a big part, both for the surrogate mothers and to the chain of people who profit from this human trade - the surrogacy agencies, doctors, clinics, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry - what we might call Big Fertility - but there are other factors at play besides money.

Guest on this episode, founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, Lexi Ellingsworth, has been investigating surrogacy and campaigned against surrogacy law reform in the UK for 7 years, where commercial surrogacy is still illegal but "altruistic" surrogacy is getting more and more common.

In her work to raise awareness around the mountains of ethical questions surrounding the practice of surrogacy in the UK and internationally, Lexi works closely with survivors of surrogacy and in this episode we get an inside view of the world of surrogate motherhood and the dangerously murky morality that surrogate mothers navigate on their often harrowing “journeys”.

We talk about how toxic empathy, low self-esteem and needing to prove you are a good person can lead some women to offer up their bodies for use. We talk about so-called reproductive privilege, the idea that “aren't you lucky you can do this without any help, you don't have to go to an IVF clinic, and you really should help other people who don't have the same luck as you”, as well as the use of human rights language such as Wombs Without Borders, “humanitarian surrogacy” and “fertility refugees”. We talk about the dehumanizing and highly manipulative language that is now being used to trivialize the whole biological act of becoming a mother into terms like “extreme babysitting” and “easy-bake oven” and what it means for women everywhere that we are creating a subclass of women who are used or useful for breeding for other people.

EPISODE LINKS

Stop Surrogacy Now UK

The Critic: Surrogacy Is Not a Human Right by Lexi Ellingsworth

The International Coalition Against Surrogate Motherhood

The Casablanca Declaration

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com

Much of today’s rise of violent misogyny can find its cultural traces in the witch hunts of old Europe and North America. And while many of us are casually aware of these historical events, our two guests on this episode, novelist Zoe Venditozzi and human rights attorney Claire Mitchell, spent the last seven years digging deep into their own country of Scotland’s prolific history of witch trials and executions - a history that was up to now virtually unknown.

Gifted storytellers and viciously funny, Claire and Zoe document their journey into this dark past in their fascinating new book How To Kill A Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women as well as on their hit podcast Witches of Scotland. Through a sharply feminist lens, Claire and Zoe unravel exactly how the witch craze kicked off, spread across Scotland, and was kept going for centuries, resulting in the torture and execution of over 4000 innocent people, most of whom were women.

In this episode we talk about all of their projects, including their legal campaign to bring justice to those accused, convicted, and executed under the The Witchcraft Act of 1563, about the creation of their Clan Witches of Scotland tartan (for sale on their website), the importance of remembering and memorializing, and also about making connections between those grim events and our present time - as the forces that were at play hundreds of years ago are very much alive today.

EPISODE LINKS

Witches of Scotland website

CONTACT US

Website: subjecttopower.com

Instagram: @subject2power

X: @SubjectToPower

email us at subjecttopower@gmail.com