So, the more I look at women’s history, the more Kathryn researches for her project, the more I become aware of the way that women’s importance in science and history is hidden by the veil of just not being mentioned. If you never mention someone, they disappear, and like Rosalind Franklin, people forget they were ever there.
And my friend Nikki pointed me at this news report, from the BBC, about Brother producing the last typewriter in the UK. And underneath in the text about the video, it said ‘Edward so-and-so built the last typewriter’ (or words to that effect). But the video actually showed an un-named woman assembling the typewriter, then handing it to him for testing.
Now, I have no idea if Edward actually did build the last one, and it’s just edited showing the assembly of a not-the-last typewriter. But that’s really poor editing if it is. If he actually built it, and tested it, and they didn’t film that, but instead filmed an earlier one… and didn’t make it clear that the one she was building was actually not the last one.
But as it stands, it makes me feel that faint feeling of ‘am I going slightly mad, or is our society still so backward that we can’t say that the woman involved built the damn thing, because men build things’. It’s bothering me.
