Historian Bettany Hughes OBE has said that even though women have always made up 50 per cent of the population, they occupy less than 0.5 per cent of recorded history.

I wish I could say that estimate surprised me. Ever been to the Louvre? In the 35K objects on display and across roughly 1400 different artists, only 22 are women.

Hughes says that even though women were prominently featured in archaeological records visually and in artifacts, they largely disappear once recorded history begins around the birth of what is called—ironically if you ask me—civilized society.

At that time, there were very highly productive and sophisticated settlements with women having great status.

They are high priestesses.

They have property rights and own land.

They write poetry.

But when these civilizations want to expand, they do it by brawn and force and so the focus of what is important moves to militarization and the balance of power shifts. Hughes says that it’s also a quantum shift in the way we are told the story of humanity.

Even though the original meaning of history is “inquiry” or “knowledge acquired by investigation” or “research”, it’s only about 2500 years ago that the word gets related to recording the past, and a specific kind of past. That’s when the Greek writer Herodotus was investigating the Greco-Persian wars. There’s that war theme again, a topic that many men have been obsessed with ever since.

By the time history became synonymous with stories, both factual and fictional, around 1390, women’s roles or stories that emphasized the importance of quality of life or survival of communities weren’t so important. They got written out. Women got written out. Unless they they were women who were sexy (to men), or violent, or were key figures in some war.

Stories about women who represented all of the other things that women are across the spectrum of being a woman, weren’t part of history until recently. Since the arrival of social media, in particular, we know more about ordinary women’s stories than we ever have in recorded history and you know what’s interesting about women?

They have great status.

They are spiritual leaders (some identify as high priestesses).

They have property rights and own land.

They write poetry.

(Broken) men are still waging wars, in which women and girls are the greatest casualties and I would like to make the argument that we are once again in a quantum shift about the way we are told the story of humanity.

Because here’s the thing, we see what they’re doing to us, not for us. We’re seeing it in real time across the world. Women and girls across the world see each other. We see the violence against our sisters. We see the violence against our children. We see that a lot of us want to tell a different story about our lives. We see that war is a zero sum game.

You reading me, writing this, is part of history living. You writing your own story is us rewriting what it really means to be a woman, for real. In this moment, there are some who want to make sure that your story, and the story of other women and girls, is marginalized because of war. I’m not in agreement with that. Are you?

If you don’t feel like “putting yourself out there” Reader it’s not you. You come by it historically.

But if in this moment your soul is remembering that she has a voice, it’s time to use it. The women who are a part of civilized society 2500 years from now will thank you. If you need help, I'm here.

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