International Women’s Day has always been one of those events that fills me with a vague sense of enthusiasm but no real sense of purpose.
By dint of my gender, I could hardly be other than enthusiastic. But I’ve always been a little stumped about how one celebrates International Women’s Day. Every year, celebrations seem to be limited to a Twitter hashtag and some noises about changing the world for the better. However, this isn’t exactly revolutionary stuff.
This is probably why the author Kate Mosse’s announcement this month has filled me with so much excitement.
Mosse’s initiative, #WomaninHistory, seeks to spotlight members of the fairer sex who have been written out of the history books.
And believe you me, there are plenty of them: men, it seems, have been keeping two firm hands on the narrative almost since the scriptures began because, darling, it’s always better to let them handle the complicated business of recording the history of the human race.
As a result, we know almost nothing about our ground-breaking female forebears, but it seems this is about to change.
“The idea with #WomanInHistory is simple,” Mosse writes. “To acknowledge women from every race, every age, every country of origin or adoption, working in every field and to applaud their achievements. To put their names back into the history books.”
To this end, people are being encouraged to tag women they believe deserve a long-denied place in the Hall of Fame with the hashtag #WomaninHistory. Out of these, the best selections will make it onto the PanMacmillan website. Backed by celebrities like Kim Catrall and Richard Osman, the initiative has already taken off, and for good reason.
A huge thank you to everyone who's taken part in our #WomanInHistory campaign. This is just the beginning. Visit the website https://t.co/T5C4aUtZeL join the conversation and let's keep celebrating the amazing women in whose footsteps we walk … #InternationalWomensDay pic.twitter.com/ua677FuDD9
— Kate Mosse (@katemosse) March 8, 2021
I won’t deny that there are flaws in the campaign – after all, just who gets the job of deciding who’s ‘worthy’ enough for a place on the wall of fame? But it made my ears prick up. Finally, here is an easily-accessible way for people to get stuck in and learn about a different side to the history we’re taught in school.
Haven’t we studied the Tudors enough? It seems to be the view that an education in the UK isn’t complete without drilling millions of children in the names of his six unlucky wives every year. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to study it in primary school and come back for a second helping sometime in your teens.
Instead, why not learn about Melisende, a Queen of Jerusalem in the 1100s, who was so powerful that her crusader husband Fulk lost a war to her, came back grovelling and had to make peace with playing second fiddle? Or what about Aphra Benn, who made a living from being a successful playwright at the same time as Shakespeare?
Mosse’s campaign has come at the perfect moment when women are finally starting to creep out of the cultural shadows and own their place in the sun. The idea of lesbian diarist Anne Lister’s story being told (on a BBC primetime slot, no less) even 10 years ago would have been incredible.
Today, nobody bats an eyelid at the importance of this swaggering Victorian pioneer. ‘Woman in History’ is part of a trend that will hopefully spill over into improving the lives of women everywhere.
And what about Ada Lovelace, the woman who invented the ancestor of the modern-day computer? When you learn about her pioneering work, any excuses for denying someone an education on the basis of their gender suddenly seem rather flimsy.
As the years roll on, women’s stories are finally being given the attention they deserve. Let’s hope it stays that way, on International Women’s Day and every day.
