Women’s achievements put all-male calendar to book
THREE friends have written a book to give history greater equality and highlight the contribution women have made to it.
Ailsa Holland, Jo Bell, both from Macclesfield, and Tania Hershman, from Didsbury, will release On This Day She on Thursday, February 18.
It takes each day of the year and tells of a noteworthy or inspirational achievement by a woman on that date.
The idea came when the pals met at Macclesfield’s Treacle Market and Ailsa complained that her current calendar – which gave a major event on each day – featured almost exclusively men.
As a response the trio set up a Twitter feed dedicated to the same thing but for women. When this attracted thousands of followers the idea was turned into a book.
Alisa, 51, of Park Lane, said: “It really bugged me there were no women in the calendar and I was just letting off steam, but they agreed with me so we said we’d do something about it. One of the reasons I was so cross was that it made me think we hadn’t come as far with equality as I’d thought. Every generation thinks they are going to solve everything.
“In the book we wanted to show as broad a range as possible, from an Egyptian pharaoh to the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for maths. Having only 366 was quite hard.”
Women featured in the book include well-known names such as Emmeline Pankhurst and Maggie
Thatcher.
But mostly there are relative unknowns such as Virginia Apgar – creator of the health test (called the Apgar Score) for justborn babies used throughout the UK.
There is also genius mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who published one of the first calculus textbooks in the 1700s – and taught her 20 siblings.
All three of the women behind the book are writers, Ailsa is a literary historian and a poet.
Jo, 52, who lives on a boat on Macclesfield Canal, also writes poetry and is an archaeologist, while Tania writes short stories and is a former science journalist.
In addition to those who have made a positive contribution to the world, some women are included whose name will be remembered less fondly.
Ailsa added: “There have been women who have done terrible things too, we are all part of humanity and that has good and bad.
”We want to create more balance in the way history is seen.”
On This Day She is available in hardback, eBook and audio.