This podcast was very interesting as it started out talking about history in general and how we choose to only highlight certain pieces of history. When intertwining this with the Great Man Theory, people worthy of being recorded mostly had military prowess, and intelligence which is a deciding factor when selecting what should be recorded. This was interesting to hear because it shows how the history recorded was just a small piece of what actually happened. Within the recorded history, most of the people behind it were male and held positions of high power.
The podcast continues to say how women received no credit for work that they did and were only there to have children. I thought it was interesting when they introduced “herstory” and how one of the girls in the podcast writes about one woman in history every month. It’s another example of how people today are shining light on important women in history who had made an impact. overall, this podcast was intriguing to listen to and learn from with the idea of the Great Man Theory.
I also really enjoyed hearing about the herstory initiative. I think, like you said, its a great way to bring successful women, who are often overshadowed, to the forefront. Acknowledging one woman a month historically, or even those who are making current contributions, are a great way to begin retelling and reshaping our history.
Only grasping a small part of what happened in history makes me wonder how much are we NOT learning from the past?
I also found it interesting how they mentioned how people are only taught the highlighted things in history. I think it’s crazy how there is so much more to history that we have not been taught yet and who knows if we ever will.
I was also particularly happy to see how much these women are doing to inform people on some of the great things that women have done in history. Thinking about just how much history we don’t even know because of the fact that maybe those influential people were women or had no military power particularly bothers me and makes me very curious about how much we just don’t know.
I was very interested in the portion where they talk about progress and like you said who hold positions of power. I believe that people in power get to determine what exactly progress is and what it means which is why these males who have been dominant in the past are more recognized because they are the same people who have decided what progress means.
It is definitely true that the people who were recognized in the past were in positions of power, and keep in mind positions of power were predominately held by men. I think we are taking great steps in recognizing women but our progression must not stop in order to reach the level that we need to.