Petition signed by 44,000 to add more female thinkers to the Politics A Level syllabus in the UK
Related Link Why is Britain’s minister for women writing feminism out of history?
The government has just announced plans to revise the Politics A-Level Curriculum. Feminism has been removed entirely, apart from a mention of the Suffragettes and Suffragists and the proposed curriculum only contains one female political thinker out of seven: Mary Wollstonecraft. The problem with erasing and writing women out of history is that we only get half the story.
When women are underrepresented in society, the government should be working to address this problem. As a young woman and student, it is imperative that girls and boys get the full picture at school, or we are doing them a disservice. It has been said that you cannot be what you cannot see. Female role models are important. Women like Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the theory of intersectionality, Catherine MacKinnon, an American feminist lawyer, Emma Goldman, anarchist and political activist, Audre Lorde, black feminist writer, Ayn Rand, novelist and philosopher and Simone de Beauvoir, French writer, political activist and social theorist. We must show women to be inspired by and be taught that the ideas of feminism and gender equality are important.
Earlier this year, Jesse McCabe used a petition to put women on the music curriculum. Together we can use public pressure to make sure that the same happens with the Politics curriculum. There is no excuse for this. There is no reason why the Department of Education and Ofqual shouldn’t get this right. Join me in asking that they change this, so that the curriculum reflects the work, thought and achievements of women. ...