In honour of International Women's Day

In honour of International Women’s Day I wanted to share some of my favourite quotes about women’s history.

1. For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
   —Virginia Woolf

2. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.
   ― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

3. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.
   ― Jane Austen

4. Everything that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world in which men are at the centre of the human enterprise and women are at the margin ‘helping’ them. Such a world does not exist — never has.
   — Gerda Lerner

5. The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that...women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.
   — Louise Otto

Acknowledgement: The portrait above of Virginia Woolf was taken sometime between 1930 and 1941. It comes from The New York Public Library digital collection. The copyright status of the item is unclear. Please see the acknowledgement page for details.

Please share. Let’s get the past and present talking.