Writing women into the past - and the future
Published in The Australian Jewish News
June 26, 2019
“History is not the past — It is the record of what’s left on the record.”
It was Hilary Mantel, the Man Booker Prize-winning English writer who penned these words; who implores us to deploy the same reserves of consideration for those who write the stories of history, as the history itself.
Indeed, the stories confined to the annals of history say as much about the historical figure or event, as the person who wrote it. The way in which we view the world is inevitably shaped by our personal perspectives, coloured by our experiences and our biases. These factors are inextricably bound not just to how we understand and interpret; but what information we — as individuals, and as a society — deem to be important, and what we do not.
According to the English historian and author Dr Bettany Hughes, while “women have always been 50 per cent of the population, they only occupy around 0.5 per cent of recorded history”.
I recently spoke at the National Council of Jewish Women (Victoria) Mina Fink Lecture. While Dr Margaret Taft recaptured and celebrated the achievements of a woman who wowed, Mina Fink, I reflected on the broader context of women in history. It was a moment to consider why Mina, and so many other remarkable women of our local — and global histories — have been largely denied their pages in the canon or had their accomplishments relegated to the shadows. It is long overdue that we examine the impact of these omissions, and how we can reclaim our women and their stories to positively affect our futures.
They are just stories. Why do they matter though? As the features editor and a news journalist at The AJN, I am at times met with this derision expressed by others. Stories are my everyday, my life. And they are yours too — perhaps more than you even realise. They are more than this week’s newspaper, or a book gathering dust. They are the stories of us, the cornerstones of how we construct our identity.