The volumes which record the history of the human race are filled with the deeds and the words of great men …. The Twentieth Century Woman … questions the completeness of the story.
Mary Ritter Beard
The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome.
Jane Austen
When you think of people in history—artists, writers, leaders, activists, you name it—what names immediately pop into your head? Maybe you think of famous artists like Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, writers like Shakespeare or Milton, leaders like Caesar or Napoleon or activists like Gandhi.
How about the internationally famous sculptor Edmonia Lewis? The 17th century English poet, playwright and spy, Aphra Behn, or prolific diarist Harriet Arbuthnot? Queen and Admiral Artemisia I, trusted advisor of Xerxes, or Queen Sayyida al-Hurra a pirate equal in power to the infamous Barbarossa?
Many more amazing women’s names have been lost to history. Sons’ names, dates of birth, and deeds were diligently recorded while daughters went uncounted and forgotten. (Genghis Kahn had four sons with his wife Börte: Jochi, Chagatai, Ögedei, and Tolui. They also had daughters, but no one knows their names or even how many there were.)
Even for relatively famous women like Queen Sayyida, information is scarce. The exact year of her birth is unknown, and nobody has any clue what happened to her after she was deposed in 1542.
The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that…women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.
Louise Otto-Peters (1819–1895)
I don’t know about you, but this makes me furious! I want to know more about the lives of these amazing women. I want their names to be as well-known as their male contemporaries. I don’t want them to be forgotten anymore.
On this site, I write about women most people have never heard of before. I adore Susan B. Anthony, Marie Curie, and Mary Wollstonecraft, but you won’t read about them on this blog. I have a huge long list of amazing women from all over the world and from all different eras that I want to tell you about. I hope you’ll stick around and learn about them with me, and tell others about how amazing they are.
If you’d like to stay in touch and be notified when new articles go live, you can sign up here:
