Women’s and gender history are well-established and vibrant fields of research. In schools, by contrast, the presence of women is far more limited, especially for those teaching and studying the pre-modern period.
In this post, Natasha Hodgson considers the scale of this deficit and some of the barriers preventing the take up of new research in schools history. As a co-founder of the Teaching Medieval Women group, Natasha considers the negative implications of school curricula that fail to pay sufficient attention to the place of women as subjects of historical study.
In the midst of the government’s curriculum and assessment review, Natasha’s post also provides examples of Teaching Medieval Women’s engagement with schools to enhance students’ understanding of women’s place and prominence in pre-modern societies, and the value of this work.
As UK Women’s History Month, March provides us with an opportunity to celebrate women’s stories and histories in a variety of media, events and publications. It offers a much-needed reminder of the need for educators to ensure they deliver a balanced and equitable history curriculum, incorporating diverse and intersectional factors such as ethnicity, age, class, and sexuality, amongst others.
For those of us fortunate to research and write on medieval women’s history, our subject reaches a wide audience and attracts considerable public interest. Janina Ramirez’s Femina and Kate Mosse’s Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries (both 2022) are bestsellers. Further evidence of public enthusiasm is the success of recent exhibitions such as the British Library’s Medieval Women: In their own Words, one of the most popular held by the library in recent years.
Yet despite this appetite for women’s stories, within school history there is a considerable lack of attention given to historical women, especially in pre-modern topics.
This dearth reflects a serious disconnect between the history that is currently taught in schools and academic expertise and research into women’s and gender history represented across UK higher education, and by academic associations such as the Women’s History Network, the Gender and Medieval Studies group, the Royal Studies Network, and the Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship. With vast amounts of scholarly and popular works available, why has school-taught history remained male-oriented and critically under-representative of women?
In 2022, a group of academics and schoolteachers co-founded the Teaching Medieval Women group with the aim of supporting teachers to address the lack of women in the curriculum, especially in pre-modern contexts.
My understanding of some of the challenges has been developed through working with committed secondary school teachers who seek to include more women’s history in the classroom. In 2022, a group of academics and schoolteachers co-founded the Teaching Medieval Women group with the aim of supporting teachers to address the lack of women in the curriculum, especially in pre-modern contexts. The team works together to co-produce knowledge-building and planning resources for teachers and students; running continual professional development (CPD) workshops for teachers; and hosting free resources online. In doing so, it aims to benefit pupils and teachers and enhance the quality and profile of history teaching.
Through our work we’ve become acutely aware of two considerable limitations placed on teachers delivering history lessons in schools. First, there are the time pressures on lesson preparation for teachers who may not have studied the topics they teach in depth, or have even studied history as a discipline.
Second, are the significant budget constraints facing schools which impact the ability to resource a new module, for example, or to provide cover to allow teachers to access CPD training. In our development work—and in a recent report by the exam board OCR and the Historical Association’s response to the government’s current curriculum review—teachers also identify the volume and chronological breadth of material they’re expected to cover as a barrier to effective learning. This is especially so where teachers seek to deliver a number of key concepts in each teaching session.
There is a convincing argument that a reduction of content, especially at GCSE, could allow teachers more opportunities to engage students with in-depth analysis, making GSCE and A-Level History less of a ‘memory-test’. This drive for ‘volume’ also limits possibilities for including ‘enrichment’ topics, within which information about women might normally be conveyed, especially if there is no requirement for these to be assessed in exams or coursework.
In the 2023 exam period, across 216 papers … of 357 instances of individuals being named in questions, only 31 were women, with nine of these instances being Elizabeth I.
In our preliminary work, teachers told us that, at GCSE and A-Level history, women were severely underrepresented in text-books, exam board module specification, and assessment questions. This led the Teaching Medieval Women group to undertake research into assessments at GCSE and A-Level across the three main exam boards in England—OCR, Edexcel and AQA—which yielded shocking results.[1]
For example, in the 2023 exam period, across 216 papers, students were directed to discuss women in their answers for 6% of questions, whereas they were directed to discuss men in 36.5% of questions. Out of 357 instances of individuals being named in questions, only 31 were women, with nine of these instances being Elizabeth I. Further, female historians were chronically underrepresented, as out of 163 quoted historians, only 22 were women.
Fig. 1 Percentage of questions (by exam type and board) where students were directed to discuss women or men in their answers
Fig 2. Comparison of number of instances of named women and men identified in exam questions across time period groups. [2]
Of course, school students only go on to take history at GCSE and A-level as an option. History is still compulsory at Key Stage 3 (KS3), but even here women are woefully under-represented in the current National Curriculum. The only topic specifically related to women is the suffrage campaign. While the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary Tudor are listed, there is more focus on the Reformation context of their reigns than their experiences as women.
Why does a lack of specification for women’s history in the curriculum matter? There has been a recognised increase in awareness of sexual harassment and violence against women and girls in educational settings, as outlined in a 2021 Ofsted report.[3] A 2023 report from the parliamentary Women and Equalities Committee attributed growing misogyny among schoolchildren to the rise of social media personalities and drew evidence from articles about individuals such as Andrew Tate.[4] Most recently, the Netflix drama ‘Adolescence’ has also highlighted this issue in the media.[5]
Research on an appropriate range of historic women from diverse backgrounds is clearly available, it just needs effective dissemination into schools.
The limited representation of women in the school curriculum adds to this wider problem by failing to challenge such misappropriations of the past, and by failing to provide an alternative narrative to encourage students to evaluate based on evidence. The charity End Sexism in Schools has already highlighted a chronic lack of representation of women writers and subject matter in current school English KS3 curricula, and is currently working on an equivalent report for history based on a survey of schools undertaken in 2024.[6]
Image: iStock, credit: Chinnapong
Research on an appropriate range of historic women from diverse backgrounds is clearly available, it just needs effective dissemination into schools. Teachers need the training and confidence to teach beyond the traditional sphere of their knowledge, and they need access to recent research
However, this can be done with appropriate support mechanisms in place. This is already happening in relation to other revisionist movements such as decolonisation: groups such as the Historical Association and the Schools History Project currently undertake important work in these areas. In order for women to become fully embedded in teaching at schools, however, they must feature in assessments, otherwise teachers cannot justify spending limited class time on them.
This March we received the interim report on the government’s curriculum and assessment review, and although it stresses the importance of children being able to ‘see themselves’ in the curriculum, there is little specific reference to women or gender as a priority.[7] However, any model that prioritises equality and diversity must also include women.
We fail to equip young women with the confidence which helps to inform their own identity development … we fail to provide young men with the knowledge and skills they need to become allies in supporting equal opportunities.
By presenting a view of the past which excludes most women, or prioritises one or two ‘exceptional’ examples, we perpetuate the idea that only men are important, both in the past and now, which negatively impacts student understanding and wellbeing. We fail to equip young women with a diverse range of aspirational role models and the confidence which helps to inform their own identity development. Similarly, we fail to provide young men with the knowledge and skills they need to become allies in supporting equal opportunities. At worst, children are left unaware of how negative gender stereotypes have developed over time, and are ill-prepared to challenge these when they encounter them at school, in the workplace, or at home.
Change has been too slow in coming, and until the review is implemented and exam boards can plan accordingly, delivering significant change at KS4 and A-Level is limited to restrictions set by current modules and resources. KS3, however, does offer some opportunities to incorporate more women immediately. The curriculum here is advisory rather than compulsory, though most schools do appear to follow it, and flexible in terms of content and assessment.[8] Teachers advise that at this stage, narrative histories relating to individuals and material culture in the form of objects offer strong frameworks for students to understand key historical concepts. These are conditions in which women’s histories can work well.
To that end, the Teaching Medieval Women group has worked with teachers to develop resources that offer a selection of individual and object-based narratives aimed at KS3, on specific curriculum topics like ‘the Norman Conquest’, or ‘society, economy and culture’ to generate a ‘critical mass’ of diverse examples.
Our teachers have highlighted pedagogical techniques in terms of ‘flipping the narrative’ and placing women at the centre instead of the periphery of planning models.[9] We have looked at thematic enquiries such as women and wealth, using administrative records and material culture to move away from traditional chronicle-based approaches to female power, and have considered the scope and breadth of women’s movement in the medieval world to challenge the idea of ‘stay-at-home’ women.
It is imperative that the academic history community now supports school educators to meet the review’s goals of ensuring the curriculum is representative of society.
One of our core members, Vicky Brock successfully implemented a 12-week module on ‘Global Medieval Women and Power’ at her school in which the students engaged with a selection of case studies from around the world, and were able to vote for their favourite each week.[10] As an academic, the positives for me have included the reactions of young people both to materials in the classroom and working with objects at the recent British Library exhibition, and sharing their excitement and insights about seeing the past from new and unexpected perspectives.
It is imperative that the academic history community now supports school educators to meet the review’s goals of ensuring the curriculum is representative of society.
There is a clear need to increase content about the past lives and experiences of women in history teaching: to better reflect the 50% who are receiving just a fraction of the attention in comparison to men; and to give students opportunities to engage with important intersectional factors such as race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and gender identity. It’s through study of our shared histories that we gain understanding of diverse perspectives. These in turn foster respect, empathy, and recognition of the experiences and identities of other students, while building confidence in their own.
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[1] This research was undertaken with support from NTU History research assistant Catherine Gower and financed by Nottingham Trent University. The data provided here is across medieval to modern periods for the year 2023. Findings specific to medieval women in assessments during 2022 and 2023 were published in an interim report in Nov 2024 . Hodgson, N., & Gower, C. (2024). ‘Finding Medieval Women in School Assessments: An interim report on GCSE and A-Level assessment papers in England 2022-2023’. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14193270
[2] Cross-period here refers to what are usually referred tow as ‘breadth’ studies which can encompass medieval to modern topics.
[3] ‘Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges’ Ofsted. June 2021.
[4] https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40740/documents/199263/default/
[5] ‘Adolescence’ Netflix (2025) https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81756069
[6] https://endsexisminschools.org.uk/campaign-projects/sexism-in-the-pre-gcse-english-curriculum-ks3/
[7] ‘Curriculum and Assessment Review: Interim report’ March 2025 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67d9617b594182179fe08778/Curriculum_and_Assessment_Review_interim_report.pdf
[8] ‘History Programmes of Study: Key Stage 3’ Department of Education, September 2013 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c66d740f0b626628abcdd/SECONDARY_national_curriculum_-_History.pdf
[9] Further suggestions can be found in Susannah Boyd ‘How should women’s history be included at KS3’ Teaching History (June 2019) https://www.history.org.uk/publications/categories/903/resource/9616/how-should-womens-history-be-included-at-key-stag
[10] Vicky Brock ‘Teaching Medieval Women at North London Collegiate School’ blog post 31/07/2024 https://teachingmedievalwomen.org/teaching-medieval-women-at-north-london-collegiate-school/
About the author
Dr Natasha Hodgson is an Associate Professor in History and Director of the Centre for Research in History, Heritage and Memory Studies (CRHHMS) at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.
Natasha is a co-founder of teachingmedievalwomen.org, a collaborative project between academics and teachers to revitalise and expand the teaching of women’s history in medieval provision at schools (2022-present). More recently, she was a consultant to the British Library exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words (2024-25).
In February, Natasha gave the Royal Historical Society’s 2025 lecture in medieval history on the subject of ‘Dangerous Journeys: Framing Women’s Movement in the Medieval World’, which is available as a video and audio recording the RHS Events Archive. Here you’ll also find a recording of the Society’s 2024 Gresham Public History Lecture – ‘Why writing women back into history matters’ – delivered by Janina Ramirez.
HEADER IMAGE: arrangement of images from the teaching Medieval Women website; first image, author’s own
