In a recent episode of The Moth, two relatives — a bereaved, elderly great uncle and his recently disinherited gay niece — kindle a friendship and start to record their family tree, guided by the uncle’s memories. When he didn’t remember a name or story, they’d just draw a blank line to fill in the gap, hoping he’d remember later. Runa, the niece telling the story, recounts: “I suddenly realized something. All of the blanks were women. All of them — reduced to a line connecting them to a man. Someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s sister. I guess the 1700’s and 1800’s and the 1900’s weren’t a time where women had the sort of adventures that people recorded and celebrated and told stories about and passed down through the generations. And I guess the stories and adventures they could have had were limited.”

This is what the saying “history is written by winners” looks like in practice: the stories of women reduced to a blank line. Or worse than no story, a completely wrong or harmful narrative could be told.

Read more at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/estherchoy/2024/02/04/why-women-leaders-must-be-expert-storytellers/?sh=363c9c20f3be