It has always struck me how many historical revolutions were started by women only to be excluded, and the narrative usurped by the patriarchy. From the beginning of recorded history — naming it the Stone and Bronze Age instead of the Flax and Textile Age. The Tricoteuses, whose hungry march on Versailles forced the king and queen back to Paris, getting their demands for bread met and triggering the French Revolution — only to be excluded because they didn't fit the male revolutionaries' feminine ideals. So they took to sitting quietly at the feet of the guillotine, knitting and tutting, since the more vocal among them lost their heads. Or the female textile workers whose revolt for bread triggered the Russian Revolution, bringing down the Tsar — on the very day we celebrate to this day as International Women's Day, the 8th of March.
On this IWD, the hidden figure I am celebrating is one who is rewriting women into the economic narrative: Katrine Marçal, whose latest book Mother of Invention shows how erasing women's presence and voices has been detrimental to our entire economic system. She starts by showing how any innovation created by women or for women was either usurped or diminished — seen as unimportant by virtue of being feminine. Unless it was seen as important, in which case it was taken over: the ultimate mansplaining, as in the revolutions already described.
"We are ignoring a lot of good ideas. We are leaving money on the table. There is so much potential — we are innovating with at least one hand tied behind our backs. What could happen if we cut that rope? Anything. And that is quite exciting to think about." — Katrine Marçal
She argues that in the crises we are facing, it is women's ingenuity and innovation that can save us. But that will only happen when we stop seeing innovation and technology as the domain of men — and stop confusing the two.
We also need to shift from seeing the face of women on what we can exploit — be it free labour or Mother Nature. Climate change is the biggest innovation problem we face, but it is a problem tangled with our ideas about gender. Seeing nature as Mother implies she will always be there to take care of us, clean up our messes, and endure the exploitation of her bounty.
Women hold the key to the future through innovation. But we need to shift our notion of what an inventor is — from a wizard or prophet to something more like a witch: one who has a deeper relationship with nature, and a symbiotic balance between ideas, creation, source and end. We just have to have the imagination to break free from the gender shackles that not only hurt women but men as well, and that create a tunnelled vision of the future.