Editor's Note:
This is an edited transcript of the interview.

It's difficult being a woman, you have a very complicated body to run.

Outspoken and outrageous, she was a strong advocate for sexual freedom for women and trashed marriage and family in the 70s. World-renowned feminist Germaine Greer is still as committed to changing the lives of women.

62-year old Greer was born in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with Honours in English and French Literature from Melbourne University and earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on Shakespearean comedy at Cambridge University when she moved to England in 1964.

In 1969, Greer was briefly married - an experience she termed as "the worst jam she's ever in." After running away from her husband, she wrote her famous book, The Female Eunuch" in which she talked about the castration of women. That book galvanized the women's liberation movement in the 70s.

Nearly 30 years on, she wrote the sequel, The Whole Women.
Greer's currently a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Warwick University.

SHANKAR:
Germaine Greer, welcome to In Conversation..

Germaine: Thank you.

SHANKAR: But how does a man interview a feminist? I find that it's hard to start with.

Germaine: Just as if you were interviewing anybody at all. You can pretend that I'm Mao or Fidel but I'm just a person.

SHANKAR: Ok. Have things change at all since the time you wrote The
Female Eunuch to the time that you write the Whole Women to now?

Germaine: Well I think we can see that things have changed. But it's mainly women who have made them change and the things they've changed most of all are themselves. The younger generation of women now is incredible. I think they're amazing. They're so serious. They're so focused. They work so hard. They are so straight in many ways and they won't accept humiliation.

When you consider what it is for a woman, to look at her marriage and say: "I can't live like this anymore. I'm not going to cover for my husband. I'm not going to pretend that we have an honourable relationship. I'm going to live in poverty with my children. That's a decision that she makes." So that 1 in 4 families with growing children in the world is now without a male head. Now in one sense, this is a disaster because it's a terrible struggle for the women.

The assumption is now that America has the holy grail of feminism, which is discrediting feminism in the rest of the world. -- Germaine on what is Feminism

SHANKAR: So where is the movement for the liberation of women headed? I mean people do have icons. I mean they do look after people like Madeline Albright and so on. What do you think of that?

Germaine: They look after Madeline? ... Future Muslim women that look up to Madeline Albright, I'll give you a holiday in the Bahamas ...

Benazir maybe. But even Benazir has her problems. Most of all are called her husband. And Benazir has a problem in Pakistan. And she's a daughter of a great father. But what is interesting is that she was more his successor than her brothers.

And if you look at the Muslim society or Hindu society, you have also the existence of the female power that is rooted to place, that is involved in dynasty and making of marriages. The role of the mother-in-law is important. I would like to see that developing into macro-political structures. When the women of Iran mobilised or the women of Afghanistan mobilised against the Taliban, they would have nothing to lose. And something really strong and not with that sort of hysterical force but with a ground swell, pushed against oppression. You see to my mind a lot of would happen was a reaction to the American cultural impact, which was destroying cultural values. So the men react in this very oppressive way, but underneath the women are pushing too. And it can only unify them. This pressure that is holding them down. Its terrible to observe and I pray that there wouldn't be too much bloodshed but that I think where the next big push would come from.

SHANKAR: But you are ruling out the push is coming from the West anymore, you know there was a time when ….

Germaine: The West is too lazy, the West is too comfortable, and it is
caught up in this cultural of immediate gratification, nothing is worth fighting for, you want everything now. What have come out of the West are strange things like the attempt to break down gender boundaries. And then the assumption is nothing special about being a woman. That a man can have some operation and he will be one, well that's not true. You know its different to be a woman you have a complicated body to run that sometimes seems to be running you, especially if you are pregnant or that you have diseases that men don't have. You have to worry about managing your fertility, which transsexual men never have to worry about. It's different and we want to say that its different, different but equal but we don't want to go into sexual apartheid either.

SHANKAR: Well I know that you don't like defining feminism. You don't like definition in general but you do think that the Feminist is a woman who thinks of herself as a woman first. But do you think you can attempt an understanding of what feminism is today because it does mean different things to different women?

Germaine: It should mean different thing to different women. It shouldn't be formulae or something. They used to be quite a lot of naval gazing - are you really a feminist you know. And if you were heterosexual that made it difficult. If you thought that girls and boys were not the same that may be difficult. But I have said that a woman is someone who before she is of her nationality or her ethnic group or her religion or her age group is a woman and looks at the world from a woman's point of view and ask herself how is this affecting woman.

SHANKAR: If you look at the younger people around the world, they are interested in the Western-led icon, someone like Madonna or Jennifer Lopez so what will you say to that?

Germaine: Well, this is the problem about cultural imperialism. You can't resist it, and because they own the machinery of communication so it goes everywhere. You have people in South America, spending a quarter of their income to buy Coca-Cola because it's a cool thing to be seen with. The assumption is now that America has the holy grail of feminism, which is discrediting feminism in the rest of the world.