‘It’s not just men that do extraordinary things’

Concerned about the absence of women’s perspectives in her Year 7 curriculum, and inspired by Ramirez’s book Femina, Freya George set out on a research project that sought to put medieval women at the heart of a new enquiry. Rather than simply telling stories about medieval women, however, George encouraged her pupils to analyse Ramirez’s purposes in challenging male-centred narratives and in studying the relationships between men and women in the past. In this article, George shares her lesson sequence and her reflections on her MEd research, showing how engaging with Femina helped her pupils rethink the medieval period, appreciate women’s agency, and confront the limitations of traditional histories...