Joanna Foat

I left school knowing almost nothing about women’s roles in society, except girls played netball, studied textiles and home economics. I wanted to play football and do woodwork.

We weren’t taught about female sportswomen, artists, mathematicians, scientists or explorers. I wanted to learn from inspiring women from history.

Only later did I realise the problem wasn’t me, it was the absence of female role models in what we were taught. This omission shapes how girls see themselves and how boys see girls. Women have been erased, sidelined, and silenced by systemic bias in academia.

As a result, we are teaching outdated gender stereotypes to the next generation, which is damaging for everyone. The truth is that most subjects: art, sport, history, science, maths, and even literature, have been framed around men’s achievements.

It’s a bit like building a library where half the shelves are empty because whole sections of human history, the women’s sections, were never written, or were deliberately removed.

The education system needs to actively seek out the missing volumes, in order to present balanced and healthy perspectives when educating children today.

In my own research into the Lumberjills of World War Two, I’ve uncovered thousands of extraordinary women who shaped our history yet were forgotten. These women are just a tiny fraction of all those missing women.

Our curriculum must reflect the full story of humanity, 50% women, 50% men, so every child can see themselves in the past and imagine themselves shaping the future.