Happy International Women’s Day, your lecture on gender history has been cancelled

On Tuesday, students in second-year Modern History were supposed to have a lecture on gender history – the only lecture on a predominantly female area of historiography.

The lecture was replaced by a talk on Marxism, the resources of which were not made available online, nor delivered in a way which explored the role of gender history within Marxism.

This lecture was cancelled due to strike action, with the lecturer apologetically adding a note before her lecture slides reading:

"I am currently taking part in the industrial action about the proposed revisions to our pension scheme. This unfortunately means that I will not be able to give my HI2001 lecture on gender. I am truly sorry about this, as this is a topic that I care deeply about.

"There are also plenty of honours modules available that incorporate gender history, if you would like to study this further!"

It seems ironic that this cancellation occurred two days before International Women Day, a second instance of modern history being accused of neglecting female history and historiography.

International Women's Day is the one day a year where we can celebrate what it means to be women, it just would have been nice if we could've enriched this with knowledge about powerful female intellectuals – and not the six men discussed in the lecture that occurred today.