Built for better
Maybe your circumstances have meant that you don’t get offered the best opportunities, or the right doors don’t open, or the pathway is littered with obstacles. Nevertheless, you know that you are built for better things and so you go after them. You take the knock-backs, and you get up again. You put on a brave face, roll back your shoulders, and do what you have to do. You are made for more and you are going to give yourself the chance to fulfil your potential.
Built for better things
My Brave New Girl podcast guest this week is Vivien Morgan who went undercover to the communist block as a video-journalist.
Vivien Morgan was a TV Video-journalist pioneer, whose documentary work for Channel 4 included Dispatches & award-winning films for ITV. She went undercover, reporting on human rights abuse and the regimes of the closed Communist countries. She is the author of Cross-dressed to Kill about women who went to war disguised as men.
Vivien's book is about fearless women who disguised themselves as men so that they could go to war and do their bit. They were early feminists in an era when women were told their place was in the home. They wanted the same opportunities as men so they dressed as men, even when that meant going to war under the threat of being killed or having to kill.
In the years that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in power, very often in order to enter the corporate world, women dressed in sharp suits and felt like they had to ‘act’ as men. During the Pandemic, ‘Zoom’ was the disguise for business women who ended with the Lion’s share of the domestic & childcare duties, but had to carry on as if it was business as usual in front of the computer screen.
Vivien herself had to take on different guises when she went into the closed communist countries in order to bring back stories of humanitarian atrocities. In the mainly male dominated world of TV and video-journalism, she had to find her own ways to stand her ground, build her confidence and expand her abilities to make the kind of work that spoke for itself.
Thanks Vivien for celebrating women in history who didn’t have the same advantages as us, but who knew they were made for more, and so did whatever they had to do, to live a fearless life of adventure and purpose. Thank you also for showing us that our resourcefulness as women, means we have the opportunity to create the lives we want for ourselves.
You can find out more about Vivien on http://www.vivienmorgan.com/ and follow her on Linkedin @vivienmorgan
Women’s Impact Project
Brave New Girl podcast celebrates women making an impact in the world and showing the courage it takes to do so.