to think that out of four houses in a school, two could carry the names of women and they needn't all be white?

[DrSeuss]

The secondary school I teach in is in one of the least diverse areas of Britain. Folk here can be very insular. Nice but insular. The area has one of the lowest take ups of Languages in the country. For some, a trip to the city five miles away is a big adventure. You get the idea.

Our school needed four new names for its four new houses. We now have three dead white males and one dead white female as names. None of them is in themselves objectionable and they have to be dead so as to avoid a situation where a house winds up carrying the name of someone we would rather it did not.

However, three men, one woman? All white? Surely we can split the genders two and two and surely we can have someone who wasn't a WASP?

not a native brit, so not 100% up on your history

from my own country, i might include

joseph brant
nellie mcclung
anna mae aquash
agnes macphail
tecumseh

just off the top of my head

my country has not existed as a nation state (or even as a single state) for anywhere near as long as britain has. i can think of more examples. it seems v weird that britain couldn't muster anyone up who is not both notable and nonwhite

just off the top of my head in the uk

mary seacole
oladuah equiano (spelling is surely wrong but hey)
rosalind franklin
one of the suffragettes- a pankhurst

This is the same as the banknotes thing at the moment isn't it, really.

Sad to think that people think it is reasonable to state that women (50% of the population) have never done anything impressive enough to be celebrated with these types of things.

DD is very taken with Mary Anning at the moment and we have read all about her and so on. Must remember to swing by her room later and point out that while what she did sounds amazing, actually it wasn't. And maybe we could talk about some men from that period instead.

Oh and I agree with OP and think it is important that role models include a range of people, for children to identify with.

When people bemoan the lack of role models for boys, they are talking about male role models.
Yet people don't believe it is helpful for girls to have female role models?
Will never understand it.

Tabard perhaps that is because you are for some reason assuming that it is the same people who hold those two contradictory viewpoints.

nicetabard that's a very good point

Part of me agrees with school houses - I had Bannister, Armstrong (Neil), Chichester and Hillary - and tokenism about race and female representation.

But I struggle to remember more than Curie and Franklin in terms of female scientists, struggle to name any famous female economists, can name female sports stars for some sports ( especially since the Olympics), can name some female artists, film directors.

So what I'm saying is it does matter -even being such a small tokenistic thing, that names of school houses in2013 might actually be diferent from school houses in 1920. That female girls are currently more exposuredto Katie Price through the media than any female scientist - and we don't do anything to say well here's Katie, whose as astute business woman but here's X who does this and Y who does that. And then we wonder why girls ( generalising) compared with boys don't aspire to cure, or invent, or explore x.

There are loads of inspiring male role models, and that's great. Though I am a bit puzzled when people insist we should promote even more of them.

But I'm really puzzled when people object when someone suggests having the odd female role model.

Surely there's enough room, seeing as people are saying there aren't that many notable women anyway?

There's really no need to feel so threatened.

Girls don't aspire to cure, yet most medical students are female,not sure you've got that right tbh. I think you give young girls too little credit, sure you get dumb airheads but you get dumb vacuous boys too. If girls are not taught that they have inferior abilities to boys, why does the gender of their role models matter?

Well, as I mentioned earlier, my schoolgirl hero was both black and male.

However, the ethnic make-up of Britain has undergone rapid changes only the past few decades, which means that, logically, anyone who is both notable and dead would reflect a very different demographic.

It is therefore statistically likely that the majority of 'notable' persons in the UK would be of Caucasian heritage. I fail to see how that's racist.

However, I would find it patronising in the extreme to have someone from my ethnic group or gender held up smugly alongside others whose achievements were more notable, but who wanted me to feel included.

I like to feel I'm intelligent, cosmopolitan and broad-minded enough to feel admiration for humankind's achievements regardless of the colour of their skin.

giving girls only male role models does teach them they are inferior to boys

to be fair, not all girls internalise this, but that is the tacit message- world changers, leaders, inspiring people= not like you, this is boy stuff

pretty crappy

if the gender of role models really doesn't matter, and we can all look past it, let's only have female ones from now on

I think there are women in UK history who have had notable achievements, though.

TBH I don't see including one woman on the banknotes, or 2 out of 4 in school houses as "tokenism". It's only tokenistic if you genuinely believe that there are no deserving women to commemorate/celebrate in that way.

And of course the way history has been recorded has painted out a lot of female contribution, but thankfully especially in the world of science, there seem to be moves to rectify that, with some profiles for eg on the BBC. Just because some of these women aren't famous doesn't mean they didn't achieve amazing things, it is more often than not simply that they have been overlooked in the past due to their sex.

NiceTabard

When people bemoan the lack of role models for boys, they are talking about male role models.
^Yet people don't believe it is helpful for girls to have female role models?
Will never understand it.^

That isn't what they say. The concerns they raise are that boys don't have fathers or father figures around. It's a world of difference.

giving girls only male role models does teach them they are inferior to boys
Bollocks.
It made me aspire to beat them at their own game : and many, many like me.

If you choose to accept that you are inferior because of dead white guys, that's your problem.
I regard it as a past failing in education in opportunity that I and my DD will ride above

There is a bit of a straw man going here suggesting that anybody is saying girls should not have any female role models. Nobody is saying that, simply that at present the pool of dead historical characters of note females are a minority, so any selection of them by the law of averages will probably be majority male. Using positive discrimination to fill a quota of females rather than only selecting people who have earned their place sends the message that girls need preferential treatment to achieve the same as boys.

Most girls are smart enough to understand the changes in demographics and gender equality over recent times, they don't need to be taught that discriminating against other demographics is the route to so called equality.

maybe the uk is just really crappy at producing role models and this is why there isn't even one single woman and/or non white person of note

but i doubt it

let's inspire whiteboys in exactly the same way by never ever showing them any white male role models- should make them rise above etc. and work a treat

I would add, if the criteria is local (North East) dead people of note, I would be saddened if they did not honour Dorothy Forster, Grace Darling or Emily Wilding Davison.

currywurst you say that historical women have not "earned their place" in these types of situations.

Can you expand on that at all? I can think of lots who have done / discovered great things.

I also don't understand how it will correct the discrimination of the past centuries, by continuing the discrimination? That seems back to front to me.

There seems to be an argument here that the reason it's all men is because men are better and did all the stuff and women didn't. That's not true though. That sort of attitude will only serve to continue prejudice.

chibi heh

Can you imagine if the new english banknotes were all going to feature women?

Surely the point is that in the Georgian and Victorian, in fact up to around the 1930's
decent education around much of the world was limited to white men.

A very, very few broke the mould : Caroline Herschel being a really notable instance

BUT
as the baby boomers and my generation studied history and economics and science, rather than feeling downtrodden, we felt invigorated to prove that past sexism/racism was just that, not a difference in capacity

hence why there are now people of all races, sexes, creeds and colours at the top of commerce, trade and much of society, so that in 100 years the progress will be clear.

Arguing over yesterday is navel gazing,
do something about today.

There seems to be an objection to recognising the achievements of notable women. There aren't as many notable women as notable men but they exist. So where they do, what's the big problem with recognising their achievements?

I'm asking currywurst, flatpack and rollmops but anyone can chip in.

"hence why there are now people of all races, sexes, creeds and colours at the top of commerce, trade and much of society,"

hahahahaha

Well there are, the odd one here and there, but hardly in any proportionate fashion. Reading that you would think that bias/discrimination was firmly in the past!

PLUS if women / people of ethnic minorities had to fight really damn hard to get to do anything that was usually reserved for white men, don't they deserve extra acknowledgement, first for their achievements in their field, and second for having to fight like hell to do it in the first place.

we could honour living people- is that forward facing enough for you?

plenty of successful, inspiring people who are not white males

what about that?

there will no doubt be some awesome reason why this is impossible, too

maybe being surrounded by dumbassery and specious logic will inspire me to rise above (doubt it, it will probably just make me laugh/piss me off)

I guess its my attitude to tokenism and dumbing down.
I went to all girls schools. We aimed high.
The fact that the people we aspired to outdo had a penis rather than a vagina was not the point. They were in the past, we were the future.

Notable women :
find me the male 1820's novelist whose books have been adapted as many times as Jane Austen
Name the generals whose mess Florence Nightingale cleared up?
Name the prison governors who Elizabeth Fry took to task?
Name the person who paid Mary Anning for her fossils?
Name the ship that Grace Darling (gray starling to my kids) saved?

BUT
today, a former classmate of mine has recently changed universities and taken her 30 strong, male, research team with her
the sister of a dear friend is regularly on the Today programme and World at One as an expert witness
another friend is the mastermind behind her celebrity husband

we sisters are doing it : we've just not died or retired yet!!!