The role of women in history is often overlooked. His story is, if you’ll excuse the pun, often his story: a tale of Kings, Emperors, Dukes, Earls, Barons, Marquesses and…yeah, you get the point. They’re all blokes.
It is hardly news that men have dominated throughout the history of warfare, politics and just about everything else, with women often the major victims of the excesses of their deeds. Open any history book, from almost any era, on almost any subject, and you’ll find that the ones being killed in the largest numbers, raped and sold as property and left at home to look after children were the women, whose passage through history has often denied them of all agency.
It has long been the fault of historians, who are also almost completely male, to have ignored the contributions and actions of women. That Women’s History is even a genre of the topic shows the patriarchal domination: there is no equivalent genre of male history, we just call it history.
March 8 is International Women’s Day and we thought it was about time to shine a light on some of the female fighters from across the pages of history who have stood up for themselves, struggled for their rights and dreamed of a better world. We take in fearsome warriors of the Ancient World, mediaeval military generals, revolutionaries of every stripe and intellectual figures who have changed the world forever.