‘Historically Woman’ is a blog dedicated to telling the stories of women from the past. The aim is to raise awareness of women’s history and highlight that it is just as rich and diverse as the men’s history we are all familiar with.

My name is Holly, and I am a History and Spanish student in the UK. At the time of writing, I have just completed my first year at university, and it is distressingly clear to me that the history course is only telling one kind of history.

Men’s.

My core history module covered from the beginnings of the Roman Empire to Twentieth Century America – a long time, right? It’s strange, then, that no women were ever brought up in a meaningful way. Of course, the year was incomplete due to strikes and COVID, and several topics we would have covered were missed out. Perhaps women would have had their time in those lectures.

I doubt it, though.

I learnt more about women’s history in my Spanish classes than I did in my history unit, covering María de Zayas and La Malinche, among others. In fact, we looked at the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire in history, yet La Malinche, a prominent figure during La Reconquista, was never mentioned. Neither was Eleanor of Aquitaine during our Middle Ages modules, nor even the Suffragettes, usually a staple of any British twentieth century studies.

It is a common misconception that women simply did not exist in history before the nineteenth century or so. They were not important, they did not hold power, their stories were erased before people began to care. This is not true.

Yes, Hatshepsut was almost struck from history by her successors. Yes, women’s successes were often quashed by marriages and society – who knows what Maria Anna Mozart’s career could have been had she not been forced to stop making music. But women have been doing great things for as long as history has existed, and their stories deserve to be told.

It is my aim and hope that this blog will, in any way, contribute towards the awareness of women’s history and women in history.