Press release: The influence and power medieval women really held

28 October 2024
Help rewrite the history books: Gresham College looks the influence and power medieval women really held
Professor Janina Ramirez to give lecture aiming to redefine an era on Tuesday, 5 November, online and in central London
How much influence and power did women hold in medieval society? It turns out to be a lot, despite what historic texts suggest.
Texts can be lost, edited, ignored or destroyed, meaning people have disappeared from records, with our historical narratives the result of each generation passing down the texts that best served their contemporary concerns.
When soldiers were needed to fight for King and Country, accounts of brave warriors circulated, while empires and nations were built and expanded through tales of heroic kings and great military leaders.
As a result, within the textual evidence women have fared badly.
A recent bestseller on the early medieval period declared women from this time 'unrecoverable'.
With new tools at our disposal, we can reconstruct the lives and societies of our ancestors, and it reveals that men and women achieved great things.
Rediscovering remarkable historical figures such as the Birka Warrior Woman, Hildegard of Bingen, and King Jadwiga offers a fresh perspective to understand an era often dismissed as 'nasty, brutish, and short'.
Rather than being exceptions, this lecture reveals the considerable influence and power held by medieval women and sheds light on the gradual erosion of female agency over subsequent centuries, and reflects the richness, complexity and diversity of the past.
Professor Janina Ramirez is to deliver The Royal Historical Society Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture at Gresham College.
She said: “The version of history we get today – in our classrooms and on our bookshelves – is a carefully curated set of snapshots, designed to put the few powerful, influential, usually politically or militarily active men of the past in high relief.
“Women have always been around 50% of the world’s population and were also present in history. They've just been written out, ignored or overwritten. But now, with new technology, advances in DNA and archaeology, we can find them again.”
Women have always constituted roughly half the global population. They were always present, and by finding them we can begin to see the past in all its complexity and diversity.
Rediscovering lost women can help us recover others whose narratives have been written out or overlooked.
While female suffrage appears to be allowing greater autonomy to women today, there are still deep-rooted issues of misogyny, racism, ableism and classism which are embedded across society.
Professor Ramirez will argue that when we discover that the constructs of these inequalities are relatively recent, by looking with fresh eyes at the past, we can begin to understand their origins and hopefully challenge them effectively to build a more equal future.
Professor Ramirez said: “This is not a binary thing, finding women at the exclusion of men. Writing women back into our histories allows us to focus on the biggest excluded section of society, and so find all those others that have been left out – the poor, the disabled, people of different races and religions.
“We cannot be what we cannot see, and finding medieval women of agency and influence helps us paint a past where we can all play a part.
“Knowing where we've come from also helps empower us to move forward to a fairer and more inclusive future.”
The Royal Historical Society Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture will be given at Gresham College’s base in Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, London.
Starting at 6pm on Tuesday, 5 November, entry is free, and it is also broadcast live online. It will last an hour.
In-person places can be booked online via Gresham College’s website, https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/women-history
ENDS
Notes to Editors
Pictures available on request
For more information about this story or to arrange an interview with a Gresham Professor please contact: Phil Creighton press@gresham.ac.uk
About Gresham College
Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures - at the university level - since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren and connects us to the founding of the Royal Society.
Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision. The College aims to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to champion academic rigour, professional expertise and freedom of expression.
Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. For more details or to make a gift, visit our website. www.gresham.ac.uk