Every year during Women’s History Month we celebrate the achievements of women who changed the world. Their names fill news articles, social media posts and classroom displays.
But how many of those women appear in the history curriculum that students study every week in school?
The research from ESIS suggests the answer is far fewer than you might expect.
The Great History Heist: Reclaiming Women’s Stories in the History Classroom
Our nationwide survey found that just 5% of schools teach a single named woman across every period of the National Curriculum.
The Great History Heist – in depth findings, the full report from the History subgroup of End Sexism in Schools, examines how women are represented in the KS3 curriculum across England.
What it reveals is a striking imbalance. Despite the central role women have played throughout the past, they remain largely absent from the way history is taught in many classrooms.
When women do appear, it is often the same small group of familiar figures. Elizabeth I, Mary I, Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison appear regularly in school curricula, while vast stretches of history are taught without a single named woman.
The result is a distorted picture of the past. Students come away with the impression that women were largely absent from history, bar fleeting appearances as queens or suffragettes.
Yet the historical record tells a very different story.
Women ruled kingdoms, financed wars, ran businesses, and shaped political debate. They translated between cultures, organised resistance movements and influenced the course of events in ways both visible and hidden. Their stories are everywhere in the archives. They are simply not always present in the curriculum.
For teachers who want to change this, the problem is rarely motivation. It is often practical. Where do you find the women? How do you include them without adding more content to an already full curriculum?
This Women’s History Month, the ESIS History team is launching their full report and resources designed to help answer those questions.
Mapping Women onto the National Curriculum
Our new resource, Mapping Women onto the National Curriculum, provides practical ways to integrate women into the topics teachers already teach. Rather than treating women’s history as a separate subject, the guide shows how women can be woven into existing enquiries across the Key Stage 3 curriculum.
It brings together:
Women who changed the world: From names to stories
The ESIS History team has also developed a series of ten in depth profiles of women drawn from across the curriculum.
Each profile includes scholarship, suggested sources and practical ideas for how their stories can be used in the classroom. Together they reveal the extraordinary range of women’s experiences across time and place.
Licoricia of Winchester
In medieval England, Licoricia of Winchester emerges from legal records as one of the most powerful businesswomen of the thirteenth century. A Jewish moneylender whose clients included nobles and royalty, her story opens discussions about trade, religion and antisemitism in medieval society.
Shajar al Durr
Across the medieval Mediterranean, Shajar al Durr rose from slavery to become the only woman to rule Egypt in her own right. During the crisis of the Seventh Crusade she organised military resistance and navigated the politics of power in a deeply male dominated world.
Elinor James
In early modern London, Elinor James used the rapidly expanding world of print to intervene in political debates during the Glorious Revolution. She was responsible for publishing more than ninety pamphlets addressed to monarchs, politicians and the public.
Nur Jahan
Meanwhile in Mughal India, Nur Jahan exercised extraordinary authority as co sovereign with Emperor Jahangir. She issued imperial orders, minted coins in her own name and shaped the cultural life of one of the most powerful empires of the seventeenth century.
Other stories reveal women’s roles in moments of upheaval and transformation.
Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges argued during the French Revolution that the principles of liberty and equality should apply to women as well as men. For speaking out, she was imprisoned and eventually executed during the Terror.
Malintzin
Malintzin, an Indigenous woman whose linguistic skills allowed her to translate between cultures during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire. She played a pivotal role in negotiations that shaped the course of empire.
The profiles also highlight women whose contributions have long been hidden in plain sight.
Betty Webb
Betty Webb was only eighteen when she began work as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Like many of the women involved in wartime intelligence, the significance of her work remained secret for decades.
Anne Lister
Anne Lister, a Georgian landowner and traveller, left behind coded diaries that now offer an extraordinary insight into the life of a lesbian woman navigating nineteenth century society.
Maeve Cavanagh
Maeve Cavanagh combined poetry and political activism as part of the Irish independence movement in the early twentieth century, using her writing to rally support for revolution.
Shirley Chisholm
And in modern American politics, Shirley Chisholm broke barriers as the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and the first Black candidate to seek the presidential nomination of a major political party.
The next stage
Throughout March, the ESIS History team will be spotlighting these ten women and exploring how their stories can be used in classrooms. They are only a small sample of the hundreds of women who appear in the new mapping resource. But together they illustrate something important.
The absence of women from the history curriculum is not inevitable. It is the result of choices about which stories we tell.
By making research, sources and scholarship easier to access, we hope to support teachers who want to broaden the narrative of the past and help students encounter a richer and more accurate history.
Because when women disappear from the curriculum, students are not just missing half the population.
They are missing half the story.
