ISTD Submission
A debate about the role and recognition for women in historical events in an editions of Women’s Hour on BBC 4 ended with the realisation that women hadn’t been ‘written out of history’, but they’ve never been written into history in the first place.
From Mary Anne Evans who wrote under the pseudonym George Elliot to ensure that her work was taken seriously, to Fanny Mendelsohn who wrote 460 pieces of music, but had to publish under her brothers name, to Katherine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson - whose contribution for the work they did at NASA has recently been told in the Oscar nominated film Hidden Figures, there is a wealth of stories out there needing to be told.
The brief “Writing Women into History” required me to “Celebrate the life of a woman who had previously gone unrecognised”, this led me to look for women who were overlooked in areas I am passionate about. In the summer of 2016 I found out my mother had breast cancer, she was lucky it was in it’s early stages but it still left an impact on my family.
After multiple surgeries and countless visits to hospitals, my mother and I began to have conversations as to whether we were carries of the BRCA gene, as my sister and I are now considered high risk for breast cancer. This led me to do some research into the gene and I learnt about the American geneticist Mary-Claire King and her discover of the BRCA1 gene.
I decided to use this information to inform my ISTD submission and created a book, based off mammogram sizes that showcased the work of King. The content for the book was derived from the three main areas which defined King’s career and also serve as a timeline of her continued success in the scientific field. People may not have heard of her, but they are likely aware of her work.
