Name a great leader.
I often sit in meeting rooms and training sessions and get asked this question. I reckon there’s an 80% chance the first one or two people who popped into your head when you read that were male. My own highly unscientific experiment on Twitter yielded seven men and three women – and my Twitter feed is full of feminists! I recently gave a training session on leadership, and when preparing my slides, it took some genuine effort to get to four male and four female examples.
To me, this is a perfect illustration of why we so desperately need Women’s History Month, which kicks off tomorrow. There is a strong tendency for women to get sidelined by history. In some ways this is understandable: Wikipedia lists over 70 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, out of whom as you well know exactly one has been a woman; the United States is on its 44th President, and I’m sure you know the numbers there too.
There is one underlying reason for this: traditional, socially determined, restrictive gender roles – the kind of social norms which for centuries have dictated what it is acceptable for a woman to do as opposed to a man. A woman may bear and look after children, run a household, look after her husband. A man may work outside the home, he may engage in social, political and economic activities from which women are barred, he may own property! There are modifications of this to account for different periods in history and variations in social class, but you get the gist.
This then has two effects, both of which lead to women being erased from history. Firstly, very few women have access to the kinds of positions that men do. To succeed in a world from which she is traditionally barred, a woman must be truly exceptional. She must refuse to believe what she sees on a daily basis and what she is told over and over – that there is no place for her. She must create the path she walks, for there are no role models she can follow; she must create the yardstick against which she will be measured, which is invariably harsher than that against which men measure themselves. She must convince the men around her that, really, despite her unfortunate lack of a penis, she can perform well at the task in front of her – a task which in no way requires the possession of a penis.
Secondly, and to some extent more horrifically, the roles and work traditionally available to women – caring, nurturing, childrearing both at home and as the associated professions – are not seen by society as of equal value to the roles and work of men. What men do is worth noting, worth writing down, worth talking about. What women do, they do in secrecy and obscurity, and it is taken for granted. These are the twin mechanisms by which women’s history, female achievement, the lives of billions of women, are erased from our history.
Alan Bennett puts this better than me:

History is not such a frolic for women as it is for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table. In 1919, for instance, they just arranged the flowers then gracefully retired.
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.
What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
Mrs Lintott in The History Boys

Though sparse on detail, the indications Education Secretary Michael Gove has so far given on his view of what history is and how it should be taught don’t leave much room for hope. Children are to learn “facts” and a “narrative”. Historian Nigel Jones welcomes Gove’s Brave New History and lists ten things he believes children must learn at school:

1. Which three kings fought for the English throne in 1066?
2. Which was the longest, biggest, and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, and in which conflict?
3. Whose tomb were Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrimage going to see?
4. Who said (according to Shakespeare) ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse?’
5. Who brought the printing press to Britain?
6. Who said she had the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of an English king?
7. Who was the Lord Protector of England?
8. How many lines in a sonnet?
9. Who, according to Churchill, were ‘the Few’?
10. Who wrote ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ ?

So, um, how many of these require you to even acknowledge the existence of women? Yep, one.
I, for one, am fed up with following behind with the bucket. I think it’s time for women to reclaim our history, so I am really excited about Women’s History Month. Over the course of March, this blog will feature a series of posts around women’s history. I am hoping to give you some food for thought – both by raising awareness of women who have succeeded in traditionally male-dominated environments, but also by shedding some light on the parts of history which are so easily overlooked by the likes of Michael Gove. What I choose to write about will invariably reflect my own interests, but suggestions and ideas are always welcome, and if anyone wants to guest blog, then drop me a line. I’m looking forward to it.