[DanaC]

And then there's this:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...-draft-protest

A move by the UK government to drop feminism from the A-level politics syllabus has triggered outrage among campaigners and students.

The section on feminism in a revised version of the course put to consultation by the Department for Education has been removed, along with the topics of sex/gender, gender equality and patriarchy. Furthermore, only one woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, appears in a list of seven political thinkers in the draft.

Now, I am guessing socialism and liberalism will both still be on that syllabus - and no doubt there will be stuff about class and labour relations - but let's not teach feminism as ever having been part of our political landscape or having had any role, at any time in its two centuries of history and multiple iterations and evolutions in shaping our current political systems and institutions.

And poor old Mary Wollstonecraft - always the only chick at the gig. She must get so fucking lonely.

And I am so tired of hearing the excuse that, women weren't part of the public picture for much of history - there weren't many women composers, or writers, or thinkers of prominence, or culture makers, or scientists or political animals. It's a lazy excuse - because there were always a few. They made an impact in their day but historians let them slide away unseen. So we compound that travesty by accepting the analysis of academics who did not consider women worth recording or investigating as historical subjects. We look back through the eyes of historians and cannot see any women and so we say, look there were no women - therefore to say that there were would be to misrepresent our past - a well-meaning lie to assuage modern sensibilities.

And it is important. This stuff matters.

Student June Eric-Udorie has launched a petition to urge Nicky Morgan, the education secretary and women’s minister, against going ahead with the changes and urged her to add more female thinkers to the A-level politics syllabus.

She writes: “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.”