Helping children discover the “forgotten” parts of History: a growing harvest ofworks and of youth podcasts feature prominent women scientists, resistant or knights who marked their era but remain in the shadow of men.
“Pioneers: 50 women with extraordinary destinies“, “Bedtime stories for rebellious girls” 1 et 2, “Portraits of free women“, “Our heroines“…Driven by the success of “Panties” of Penelope Bagieuthis feminist wave is now sweeping through the children’s sections of bookstores but also on the airwaves.
Historical podcast aimed at 7-12 year olds, “The Odysseys” of France inter thus totaled 40 million listens in five years by taking a facetious look at Alice Guyfirst female filmmaker, the little-known discoverer of DNA Rosalind Franklin you are a hacker Anne Bonny.
Producer of this program, Laure Grandbesançon speaks of a “very, very long“rebalancing work”after 2,000 years of patriarchy“. “We must tell the story of these women to open the imagination and show that it is not only men who are daredevils and brave danger“, she said to theAFP.
“What’s the story I wasn’t taught at school?”
Also targeting the younger generation, the essayist Titiou Lecoq extended his work on “The Great Forgotten“in an illustrated version intended for teenagers and entitled”Women also made history“(ed. Les Arènes).”My idea started from a question: what is the history that I was not taught at school?“, she explains to theAFP.
“For a long time, I believed what they said at school: that women had not been able to participate in the major events of French life because they had been prevented from doing so as women.“, she explains. “But that’s not true, they always participated in political life, always wrote, excelled in the arts but they were just forgotten posthumously“.
School textbooks: women too little present
THE school textbooks have long been held responsible for this “invisibilisation“. According to a 2020 study by the Hubertine Auclert Ile-de-France Center, the works or works of women are “25 times fewer” in history books than those of men and only 3.2% of the biographies present in the works ofSecond are devoted to women.
Quoting the physicist Marie Curie or the mathematician Tatiana Ehrenfestthe study also highlighted the “tendency to downplay the importance“women scientists by associating them”above all (…) to the work of their husbands“.
A Senate report in 2014 cited as an example a school textbook which devoted a double page to the dissemination of the thought of Newton par Voltaire in “simply forgetting” to mention his translator Emilie du Châtelet.
“History is full of female figures who have had capital importance”
There is, however, no shortage of leading female figures. “There are even plenty“, underlines Albin Querufounder of Quelle histoire. Next to the famous Joan of Arc or Coco Chanelthis publishing house for 7-10 year olds has explored more unknown female destinies including that ofEleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), who was successively queen of France and England and played a major political role.
“It is not a militant act but, when we are interested in History, we want to tell it in the most complete way possible and it turns out that History is full of female figures who have had a capital importance“, adds the editor, who recently published “The 100 great women of history“.
The role of “ordinary women”
Without completely obscuring exceptional destinies, Titiou Lecoq insists in his work on the role “ordinary women“, including in very distant times.
“We always talk about prehistoric men, assuming that these were the men who hunted and made fire. The question doesn’t even arise, when in reality we don’t know it at all“, says the writer who hopes that these books will help children take control of their destiny.”The idea is to tell them: it is up to you to write the rest of this Story and it is not a foregone conclusion.“.
