Where Does Women's History Really Start?

It's a New Year and time for a new way of doing history. After *many* failed attempts, I mean it this time 😂😁

Hello and happy Thursday to you!

If you’ve been here long enough, you’ll know that I’ve tried (and failed) many times to find a better way to do women’s history. I’ve never believed that you can just copy and paste women’s stories into the existing narrative. That dominant narrative was never designed to include women in the first place, so why would the ‘add women and stir’ approach work? Short answer: it doesn’t.

I’ve always known this to be true (like deep, deep in my soul) but never known what the alternative narrative might look like. I’ve played around with several ideas. Integrated Histories was my first real go at it. Now, that model works really well (I’m not even gonna play humble about it) BUT only if you already have a good baseline knowledge of women’s history. As a collective, I’m sad to say that we don’t. Actually, we have a really terrible issue that I like to call ‘woman-washing,’ where the same stories get recycled. It’s like a never-ending spin cycle that I am just so incredibly bored of and that makes this subject look so airy-fairy and basic. No wonder most people don’t take women’s history seriously. But that’s a(n angry ranty) story for another day and I want to stay on track here. So, the point is: I’m sitting on Integrated Histories until we finally take that laundry out.

I also tried tracing women’s history through the perspectives of the first women herstorians that I found back in 2022, whose works had largely been forgotten. Don’t get me wrong, using the works of women historians is a solid idea (and something I’ll be doing more in the future) but, I realised that those women were working inside that dominant framework, so that isn’t ideal, either.

Towards the end of last year, I was watching one of the brilliant Professor Ronald Hutton’s talks about pre-Christian religion in Britain for Gresham College (go here if you’re interested and prepared to disappear down the rabbit hole for an entire weekend 😂). While listening to the dulcet tones of St Ronald, an idea just dropped into my mind that has forever changed the way that I approach this women’s history dilemma.

So, instead of trying to find a way from within, let’s imagine that we know nothing about women’s history in Britain. Absolutely nothing. Not a single name or a single story. If we approached it from that angle – a total clean slate – where would we start?

We’d start at the beginning.

Remember, though: we aren’t archaeologists around here. We’re historians. We deal with words. If it’s not written down, we’re packing up and going to the library.

So, let’s find the first words ever written about British women. How far back can we go?

Writing *About* Women

There are several ways to approach this. The first is that you can look for words that were written *about* women. Probably my favourite is this story, published by the Roman historian, Cassius Dio, around the year 210 AD:

“A very witty remark is reported to have been made by the wife of Argentocoxus, a Caledonian, to Julia Augusta. When the empress was jesting with her, after the treaty, about the free intercourse of her sex with men in Britain, she replied: “We fulfill the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest.” Such was the retort of the British woman.”

Argentocoxus was a Pictish tribal chief in what is now Scotland. His wife’s name remains a mystery to us. Julia Augusta was the Roman Empress, married to Septimius Severus. Rome tried and failed to conquer Scotland and instead signed a treaty with the Picts, which is the ‘treaty’ mentioned in the source.

The issue with using words that were written *about* women is one of skewed perspective. We are seeing women *through* somebody else’s eyes, and that raises questions about a source’s authenticity and accuracy.

If we take the above quote, we need to remember that the Romans thought themselves infinitely superior to all the Celtic tribes of Britain, so creating a contrast between the sexuality of Celtic and Roman women was one way to emphasise Rome’s superiority. However, the quote does throw some shade on Roman women, and that’s interesting. Maybe there is some truth to this alleged conversation – or maybe Dio was just a bit of a misogynist.

There are some questions we just can’t answer, and this problem isn’t specific to women’s history, of course. Whatever time and place you study, you’re going to run into this along the way.

Interestingly, though, whichever early source you choose, women’s history begins during the Roman occupation of Britain.

Writing *By* Women

The other way of finding a beginning of women’s history is to look for written that were *by* women. Obviously, this is (for me) the most interesting way and certainly the most authentic.

Like sources *about* women, those written *by* women still place us firmly in the Roman occupation of Britain, so with a history that begins in the 1^st century AD.

I’ll share some of these *by* women sources with you next week – and, omg, they’re good. I promise you that.

But here are the main points:

1. You *can* build a woman-centred narrative of British history and this is the first part of it. As this unfolds, you’ll see that it’s a very intimate history. It’s less centred on the big events of the day (though, of course, women were present and involved in all of those), but more focused on the personal.

2. You can only build this narrative if you forget everything you think you know and truly start at the beginning. That’s the only way you’ll see women on their own terms and remove the ‘add women and stir’ nonsense that’s plagued us for so long.

This is the foundation, so now it’s time to build.

Until next time,

Kaye x