For as long as men have existed, so have women.

Yet a recent report by the charity End Sexism in Schools (ESIS) found that 59 per cent of key stage 3 history lessons don’t feature any women, while just 12 per cent focus on women.

In addition, the research found that of the named women included in lessons, just four - Elizabeth I, Mary I, Emmeline Pankhurst and Emily Davison - dominate.

Sasha Smith, chair of the ESIS history group and assistant headteacher for teaching and learning at The Priory City of Lincoln Academy, tells Tes that these findings are “entirely unsurprising”.

“You have two Tudor women who are important, and then we skip forward 300 years and we have two suffragettes who are important, and that’s women’s history for you, done and dusted,” she says. “It really illustrates why there is such a need for change.”

The report - named The Great History Heist - is calling for the national curriculum to be amended so that it explicitly states that women must form part of all core content in the subject.

A lack of women in history lessons

It’s a timely request given that the final report from the curriculum and assessment review is due to be published this autumn. But is it likely to bring change?

Natasha Hodgson, associate professor of medieval history at Nottingham Trent University and a co-author of The Great History Heist, says the review’s interim report, which was published in the spring, was “disappointing” in this regard.

“They didn’t specifically make reference to gender,” she says. “What they did say, and what we agree with, is that everyone should be able to see themselves in the curriculum. But given that representation should be proportional, we should be seeing more women than we currently do.”

She adds that the ESIS report focuses on key stage 3 because this is a time when teachers have more agency over the content they deliver, since there are no external assessments.

As such, even if the curriculum review doesn’t bring about a revolution here, schools have some flexibility to make their own changes.

One leader who has done just that is Chelsey Ramsbottom, head of history at Thorpe St Andrew School and Sixth Form in Norwich, part of Broad Horizons Education Trust, whose work means the school’s gender statistics in history are now far better than the national average.

“I counted 64 women and 67 men across key stage 3,” she says.

This list of women is wide-ranging, from former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to Yaa Asantewaa, queen mother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire, which existed between 1701 and 1901 in modern-day Ghana.

Diversity in the curriculum

Sophie Mullen, a history teacher at Coombeshead Academy in Devon, part of Education South West, adds that efforts to improve the representation of women come “hand in hand” with increasing diversity in the curriculum and a focus on areas such as race.

For example, when teaching Roman Britain, Mullen often includes the story of the Ivory Bangle Lady, whose remains, found in York, suggest that she was a high-status woman of North African descent. This story intrigues students because it shows that “England wasn’t just white…it challenges stereotypes”, she says.

Of course, carrying out additional research places an extra burden on teachers for whom workload is already a concern, which is why ESIS is calling for gender-balanced resources to be made more accessible.

Evelyn Waite, history teacher and literacy lead at Caxton College, an international school in Valencia, Spain, that follows the English curriculum, also makes a concerted effort to include more women in her lessons.

But she says there are “constraints on time”, given that key stage 3 history extends from medieval times to the present day.

“There’s a tension between trying to cover breadth of history…and being able to drill down and give depth as well,” she explains.

The challenges of change

Another difficulty with introducing more women into the history curriculum is that the subject focuses on topics that - because of the dominance of patriarchy - have typically involved more men.

“Looking at power and war as key themes does intrinsically exclude women,” says Smith.

This “top-down history” is something that Waite also recognises. However, she says that it comes with good reason. Some political ideas that emerge in key stage 3 history, such as fascism, are complex concepts. “So we have to start with the dates, the big figures. Who was in charge? What did the government look like? That does often involve looking at those male figures,” she explains.

However, there are ways to include more women that don’t require a total overhaul of the curriculum.

One simple approach is to pay attention to the sources used in lessons, says Smith. “Is there a woman’s voice within the source material? Is there a woman’s voice within the interpretations? All of those things exist. It takes a Google, then you can make that change.”

Homework research tasks

Meanwhile, Ramsbottom says homework tasks can be a good way to encourage students to learn more about a wider range of figures when there isn’t time during lessons.

She sets a “hall of fame” task, selecting four figures whose lives students then research at home. “And if I feel the lessons in that unit have too many men, I’ll make sure the ‘hall of fame’ has got proportionally more women,” she says.

Mullen adds that one homework task that has gone down well with her students is what she calls “meanwhile, elsewhere”, for which she prepares a one-page PDF that includes a link for a YouTube video or a website and some images about a person who was alive during the period students have been learning about.

This task is particularly useful for those topics that naturally feature more men. The Norman Conquest, for example, “is very much about men fighting for the throne”, she says, and so this is a way around that.

“You can still find opportunities to bring another perspective, to open [students’] eyes to the bigger history,” Mullen says.

Jessica Robson, trust lead for history at Kent-based Turner Schools, suggests another option is to focus more on social history.

“Whatever thing we’re looking at, we look at how the ordinary people were impacted, not just the kings and queens that made those decisions. That’s a nice, easy way to get women into the curriculum,” she says. For example, Robson adds, “boys and girls really love it” when they learn about the Match Girls (pictured above) as part of the Industrial Revolution topic.

The teachers say all this work has helped to better engage students, with Smith reporting a significant uptick in the number choosing GCSE history after she implemented changes in her previous school.

‘We are not teaching an accurate history’

However, she warns that it can’t only be up to the teachers to make this change, not least because without exam specifications including the study of women, it isn’t realistic for all schools to follow suit.

“If women aren’t going to be on the exam questions, teachers can’t justify spending time teaching women,” she says.

This is why ESIS is calling for the government to work with exam boards to increase the number of named women in specifications across all historical periods, which would naturally flow down to key stage 3, too.

Until then, “we are not teaching an accurate and complete history”, says Smith.

Hodgson adds that given the prevalence of misogynistic attitudes among students, the stakes are high.

“It’s not just important for girls. It’s important for boys as well. To see the contribution that women have made to society, to understand it and develop empathy. It works both ways.”

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