January 22, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Feminist writer and academic Germaine Greer embraces 70
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, January 22, Graphic News:  Germaine Greer harbours no illusions about growing old. Since becoming a pensioner, she has written, with the frank, clear voice recognisable in all her work, about how society treats the elderly and how, as individuals, we are, more often than not, in denial about the ageing process. In an article for the Australian magazine, Home Hints, last year, she wryly described 70 as being "all about...maintenance" and declared herself ready, finally, to care for "my hopelessly neglected body". She celebrates the freedom age brings from having to follow fads and fashions, and no longer wastes time accepting invitations she'd rather decline. "Life is now too short for any activity that isn't rewarding", she says.

Greer is perhaps Australia's most famous -- and critical -- ex-patriot. For many years she didn't go back to visit at all, but now claims to be happiest when staying in her remote "scrap of Queensland". Greer has said she will only return for good when a fair deal is struck for the Aboriginal people, whose plight she has championed on many occasions. Her views on "my poor country", as she often refers to Australia -- its menfolk, its involvement in conflicts such as the "war on terror", as well as its image in the world as a place only of leisure, are well documented. Born in Melbourne, Greer had a convent school education and won a teaching scholarship to Melbourne University, where she studied English and French. She moved to Sydney to lecture and to take her Masters degree, and it was here that she met an intellectual group known as the Push, whose radical, anarchic views chimed with her own.
 
She left Australia for Britain in 1964, to study her PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge, which, to this day, remains a women-only institution. Under various pen names, Greer began contributing to magazines including Private Eye and Oz, and went on to lecture in English at the University of Warwick, in 1968. While there, in 1970, she published the book with which she will forever be associated, The Female Eunuch. An instant bestseller, eventually translated into a dozen languages, the work set out the idea that women's sexuality, creativity and personal fulfilment are all limited and stifled in a consumer-led society, where female stereotypes -- largely the product of a male-dominated culture -- are reinforced down the generations. The book caused huge debate and controversy, not least for its attack on the nuclear family, which Greer described as a bad environment for women. It established her as the foremost voice of Women's Liberation, a movement which gained ground during the 70s, changing laws and winning equality in significant areas of work and pay.

Many of the themes of The Female Eunuch were developed in Greer's later books including Sex and Destiny (1984) and The Whole Woman (1999). In 2005, she endured only six days in the Celebrity Big Brother UK house -- a reality television programme in which a group of people is forced to live under one roof -- before walking out. Two years ago, Greer once again stirred up academia with her book, Shakespeare's Wife, in which she investigated the character of Anne Hathaway and her influence on the work of the world's most famous -- male -- playwright.
/ENDS