As I was listening to the podcast, I was fascinated by the beginning. I am a feminist myself and I loved that they were drawing attention to the fact that the recorded history we have is only a small picture of what actually happened in the past. This depiction that we have only included people of high status, wealth, or in positions of power. But what about the rest of the people in the world? Were their stories not important enough to be passed down or written down? A lot of these stories that we don’t have are the story of women. Throughout history, women have been seen as pretty things that should be seen and not heard. This means that the idea of women is that they weren’t often doing work that actually mattered to the world. They were just having babies and serving their husbands. This podcast sheds some light on a lot of the good that people are doing to try and get women’s stories out into the open. They talk about some of the female scientists that are covered up by the skewed version of history that is heavily dominated by men. I especially liked the example that they gave about the woman who was called the prettiest woman in the world and that’s what people knew her as. She was also an inventor but no one bothered to think about that. She was just seen as a pretty girl and not as the intelligent woman that she was.
This is why I think that the great man theory is just wrong. History was not made by men, it was just recorded by men who didn’t want to share the spotlight. The history that we know is not a full, well rounded, view of what happened in the past it is only one side of the story. There are so many people who aren’t included in the world history that deserve to have their stories told. Women are consistently held back from achieving everything that they could in a world that is built on the ideas and fundamentals of sexism. This is why women in STEM has been a historically low population. It is hard for women to make it in such a male-dominated workforce. Great-Man theory, or the idea that history is shaped by notable men, is no longer, and never truly was, an accurate depiction of what happened in the past
I really appreciated how honest and striking the message in this post was; the bold claim that the Great Man theory is just plain wrong and that men simply did not want to share the spotlight is definitely something to consider. To expand, men were used to being the heroes and the center of attention, why would they even consider giving women credit if they did not have to?
I think your point about how women being seen as pretty things that should be seen and not heard is extremely important when discussing the topic of Great Man’s Theory. The definition of the theory itself talks about men who are intelligent, genius, and possess a variety of traits that make them natural leaders. This frustrates me because not many women in history are seen as having these natural traits- in fact, women often have to work twice as hard to be recognized for the same accomplishments as men.
I agree with your statements, and I think that because we have a limited lens on women and the lower class throughout history, we have and feel the need to record and document almost everything in our lives, as our generation doesn’t want to be forgotten.
I agree with your argument that the lack of written history on the working women contributed to the skewed perception of women in general. As a society, we are still struggling with women deserving the recognition and opportunity they deserve. I wonder if that would still be the case if there was a millennium more of writings on working and powerful women, but the lack of history has greatly contributed in favor to males.
I really like this post!I completely agree that to leave certain people out of the historical events not only misconstrues what actually happens but diminishes the ‘outcast’s’ agency. By removing women influence, women become objects as a opposed to influencers and thus we have the creation of these stereotypical assets associated with women.