.png_0f7278855842d9d4461b97b1ec506a3a.png)
Feminist History for Every Day of the Year - book review
History forgets the women; Kate Mosse writes them back in. Here’s a year’s worth of trailblazers and unsung pioneers: 366 Incredible Women, From Boudica to Taylor Swift.
History has a habit of forgetting half the population – they pop up in just 0.5% of the record books. Kate Mosse, for one, wants to bloody well do something about that stat.
Speaking of stats, incidentally, here’s some more.
Just 15% of UK blue plaques honour women; and only one in five statues depicts them (in Edinburgh, there are more statues of dogs). In UK secondary schools, 82% of the novels on the curriculum centre on male protagonists; 77% of schools teach just one – or zero – books by female authors; and in the 2023 GCSE history papers, just 6% of questions focused on women, compared with 37% on men.
“Personally,” says Mosse, “those statistics make me want to act, to shine a light on serious issues around representation. That’s more powerful than either being angry or sad.”
Beautifully illustrated
Her response, subtitled 366 Incredible Women, From Boudica to Taylor Swift, is this beautifully illustrated almanac, teeming with quotes, poems, Sophie Bass’s bold illustrations, and thematic essays on everything from women’s sport to music and body autonomy. Plus, of course, daily entries shining a light on those famous and lesser-known women and girls who “who refused to accept the limitations put on them”: from mother of modern feminism Mary Wollstonecraft to pop star Billie Eilish, anti-Nazi activist Sophie Scholl, Pakistani educator Malala Yousafzai, and the extraordinary Josephine Baker: singer, dancer, actor, pilot – and second world war French resistance spy.
In fact, the range of careers and vocations on display is extraordinary: within these pages you’ll find a computer pioneer (Dorothy Vaughan), a racehorse trainer (Florence Nagle), a primatologist (Dian Fossey), a fossil hunter (Mary Anning), a trade unionist (Jayaben Desai), and Britain’s first black headteacher (Beryl Gilroy). It’s the kind of book you dip into for one story – and end up reading six more.
This is for readers 12 and up, but it’s equally aimed at adults – and it never mythologises or soft-soaps. Marie Stopes may have founded Britain’s first birth control clinic, but her support for eugenics isn’t brushed under the rug here. Boys and men appear too, as allies. As Mosse says: “One of the essays is about how boys can be feminists too, because the world is a better place if all those who believe in fairness of opportunity stand together and find a common language – and that means supporting boys to do that too.”
Clearly, one of the most vital history books we need right now – or indeed, any time.
- Feminist History for Every Day of the Year: 366 Incredible Women, From Boudica to Taylor Swift, by Kate Mosse is out now from Macmillan Children's Books.
Ali Catterall is an award-winning writer, journalist and filmmaker whose writing has featured in the Guardian, Time Out, GQ, Film4, Word magazine and the Big Issue, among many others. Ali is also the writer and director of the 2023 film Scala!!!
Other books you might enjoy
Breaking: How the Media Works, When It Doesn’t… And Why It Matters