Nobody can grant “women’s rights” as those are birthrights. In some societies, those rights have been stolen.
Roland Orzabal is a British musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and author. He is the guitarist, co-lead vocalist, main songwriter and a co-founder of Tears for Fears. Orzabal has been the only constant member of the band, having appeared on every Tears for Fears studio album.
Orzabal’s mother is English and his father (George Orzabal de la Quintana) is from Paris, France, of Spanish-Basque descent. Roland’s grandfather, Arturo Orzabal de la Quintana, was from Buenos Aires, Argentina and son of emigrants from the Basque Country.
“Woman in Chains” was recorded as a duet. Orzabal explained the impetus for the lyric to Melody Maker: “I was reading some feminist literature at the time and I discovered that there are societies in the world still in existence today that are non-patriarchal. They don’t have the man at the top and the women at the bottom. They’re matricentric—they have the woman at the centre and these societies are a lot less violent, a lot less greedy and there’s generally less animosity… but the song is also about how men traditionally play down the feminine side of their characters and how both men and women suffer for it…. I think men in a patriarchal society are sold down the river a bit—okay, maybe we’re told that we’re in control but there are also a hell of a lot of things that we miss out on, which women are allowed to be”.
During a 2021 interview with the Louder website, when asked if the song is the feminist anthem it’s usually read as, Orzabal replied: “Um… it was really about my mother. At one point in her life she was a stripper. My father and she ran an entertainment agency from a council house in Portsmouth. So she would go out to strip, and my father would send a driver out with her to spy on her. If she talked to another man, when she came back he would beat her up. So it’s about domestic abuse.”