Following recent research from End Sexism in Schools which found that women are still consistently under-represented in school history lessons at KS3, GDST Consultant Teacher for Humanities and Head of History at Sutton High School, Surrey, Jake Unwin, discusses the importance of including more women in the history curriculum, and ways to go about it.
It is nearly a century since Virginia Woolf observed that “for most of history, anonymous was a woman.” Much has changed since the 1920s, both in society and in the richness of historical writing. Yet recent evidence suggests that in our history classrooms this anonymity often remains.
The 2025 report by End Sexism in Schools found that 59% of Key Stage 3 History lessons contained no women at all, and only 12% featured women as the main focus1. These figures are sobering, particularly within the independent sector. Economic pressures have accelerated the move from single-sex to co-educational models, and the number of single-sex girls’ schools has dropped from 374 in 2015 to only 151 in 2025. In this context, it is especially concerning if the curriculum in boys’ or co-educational schools fails to represent the history of half the population….