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The Remedial Herstory podcast explores what happened to the women in history class and puts them in.“Those who tell the stories rule society.”― Plato *Lesson plans referenced in the podcast can be found on our "Lessons" Page! |
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Half of humanity is female, but if you walk into an elementary or secondary history classroom, women make up an embarrassingly small fraction of the people and topics discussed. The National Women’s History Museum examined the state social studies standards and found that women were mentioned inconsistently and at fractions of male mentions. They found that women’s historical themes were absent and aptly titled their study, “Where are the Women?” You can examine their study at https://www.womenshistory.org/social-studies-standards. Unladylike2020, an organization that produces films with PBS similarly found women were absent, so they produced a 26 part video series on important women in American history, largely from the Progressive Era. They also produced some primary source analysis lesson plans. These two groups joined with the National Council for the Social Studies, the Women’s History Alliance, Women of the Hall, and my organization, the Remedial Herstory Project, for a summit in 2021 again asking, “Where are the Women?”
Textbooks remain blind to women’s contributions and women’s themes. Study after study from the 1970s to present show that women are mentioned at fractions of men’s mentions and are often discussed in gender stereotypical terms, emphasizing women that women’s historians don’t. And while these studies show longitudinal progress the “gender gap” in representation remains. History education in US public schools rarely mentions women, and when it does, it only mentions women who entered into the male sphere, often as a subtopic to the real message or narrative of the lesson reinforcing the idea lamented and coined by Harvard professor, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that “well behaved women seldom make history.” Women’s themes are almost never addressed. Mercy Otis Warren, the first historian of the American Revolution is a prime example. Few people know her name and yet she corresponded with all the founding fathers throughout the Revolutionary Era, rallied the country to the cause with her plays, and wrote the first record of the era, and an Anti-Federalist critique of the Constitution. She should be better known but isn’t because of the male bias innate in selected topics. In her recent dissertation, Cicely Scheiner-Fisher found that while 91% of teachers in Orange County Schools incorporate women’s voices in the curriculum, only 25% do it once a week or more, and 46% do it once a month or less! It varied by the teacher, in a ten-month school year, the median student was learning about women’s history once a month, in essence, most teachers barely teach women’s history. Of the teachers who didn’t teach women’s history at all, half said that it wasn’t required, the other half said there just wasn’t enough time. But, I suspect that if teachers who want to teach women’s history aren’t teaching it, it’s because they don’t know women’s history, or women’s themes and they don’t know that women had known perspectives on the things they already teach. Simply, they don’t understand that women are entrenched in the historical narrative we already know, and they don’t have the tools to teach it. This project aims to provide the tools. The momentum is building. The “Where are the women? Summit” and the political climate of 2021 are forcing a re-examination of state standards for equity and access: I want to provide the tools. The voices of women and minorities bring color and light to the full narrative, for they are the richness of the story and the majority of the United States and the world. --Kelsie Brook Eckert |
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