Different tack here: March is Women’s History Month. And what is the point of Women’s History Month? Well, we have 50 per cent of the population, but only occupy 0.5 per cent of recorded history. And that matters if generation after generation after generation has been exposed to that imbalance as a truth about values. I know that some Members here in the Chamber like to hark back to the twentieth century to make their political points, as if nothing has happened in the meantime, but to explain the problem of 0.5 per cent for half the population, and its effects on our cultural DNA, Dr Bettany Hughes thinks that we need to start right back with prehistory, where the opposite was true.

If you look at all the figurines made between 40,000 BC until around 5,000 BC, a period that really sees the flourishing of the modern mind, at that time about 90 per cent of all those figurines were of women. So, women are very present in the archaeological record, but then start to disappear once prehistory turns into history. At the birth of civilised society, you have very highly productive and sophisticated settlements, with women having great status—they were high priestesses, they had property rights, they owned land, they wrote poetry. But these new civilisations wanted to expand, and that needed muscle power. At that point, society becomes more militarised, and the balance of power moved. It was then that we saw the quantum shift in the story of the world, and we start to find powerful warrior gods appearing in the archaeology, as well as in the epic tales, representing a gear change in how we are told the story of humanity.

Growth through military means—muscle mattered, and it still matters. This long-lived status quo has become the base note of society. Whereas previously a measure of achievement might have been the physical survival and nurture of a community, and quality of life, it is even now expansion and success. Women’s roles continued to diminish, and women’s strengths lost their kudos. So, why do we know about some women but not others? Well, if you think of some of the women in history that we’ve all heard of—the likes of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy—one of the reasons their stories have lasted so long is that they are portrayed as highly sexualised. They’re exciting, but the danger of their influence has also become a warped morality tale. We remember them as creatures who draw men towards their beds and towards their death, or, in Judeo-Christian culture, to their fall from grace. Often women aren’t allowed to be individual human characters in history—they have to be stereotypes.

Older literature has been complicit with that as well. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher. She was incredibly good at maths, and she wasn’t particularly good looking. But, when we think of her, we think of the big-breasted seductress, bathing in milk, with this really weird relationship with asps. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we’re offered a fantasy version of their lives. Now, of course, even if we don’t believe this stuff any more, and we say out loud that men and women are equal, how are we still so affected by it? How is it still possible for any Member of the European Parliament—as one did last week—to declare, unashamedly, that women should be paid less because we are smaller, weaker and less intelligent? How can it be possible to say that these days? Now, Dr Hughes says that there’s been a problem here for at least 3,500 years, so, it’s no surprise that we have some catching up to do, because we’re actually overcoming a hardwired collective false memory.

Physically, the stories of women have been written out of history rather than written in, but times are changing and I think we’re more interested now in the story of what it means to be human, as opposed to being a man or a woman. It’s an issue that has very, very deep roots and I would really like us to be sure that we collectively are known as the generation that opened rather than closed minds and who opened up these stories, put them back on the page and started recalibrating that collective memory, because, yes, of course, women have impacted on history. It’s just that we need to know about it and it’s difficult to celebrate or recognise our achievements as women, as the motion says, if we don’t know about them. So, I thank Members who have contributed today for actually giving some examples. We need to actively look back for women’s stories and put them back into the historical narrative, globally, nationally, and locally. Of course, it’s down in no small part to the—. It’s part of the job of historians to fill the gaps in history, which is why I think we should resist any attempt to downplay the role of history in the new Wales curriculum, but ask to reconsider what it’s for. Let’s get it to do the right thing, Joyce. Let it be bold—I think somebody else mentioned that we need to be bold—in recalibrating that collective memory so that women’s strengths are valued across time and not just in the last 100 years. The Nazis may have failed to conquer Europe, but they’ve done a damn good job of dominating our history curriculum, and we are still talking about muscle and missing half our history a century after the first International Women’s Day. Thank you.