A history of women against the odds

When James I was presented with a book of poems in his praise in six languages, authored by a mere 16-year-old, Bathsua Makin, he is reputed to have responded: "But can she spin?" It was not the worst show of misogyny for a man who also famously unleashed the witch trials.

But Can She Spin? tells the stories of women rising in spite of idiots, like Bathsua, who grew up to be the most learned woman of Stuart England. More broadly, it tells a history of women that doesn't stick to a few queens and suffragettes.

Women have been around a while. You wouldn't know it looking at much of the popular history content out there. I've devoured history books and podcasts most of my life, but I grew frustrated at how few people like me I saw in them. Great men leading armies aren't uninteresting, but they're not the totality of human experience.

But Can She Spin? is a feminist history, of course, but it's not a history of feminism. It's a history of our foremothers. Women's history is not just the story of our emancipation; it's the history of the world, with female characters plucked out of the shadows for once. It's the ordinary and the extraordinary. What was the life of a single woman in the Middle Ages? Who were the businesswomen of the Renaissance? Who were the women who fought Hitler? How was a Victorian home organised? What was it like to live, study, fall in love, build a career, give birth, make money, provide for a family, get sick, buy a house, make friends, have fun... in the past? And what if women did all those things too?

Meet your host

I'm Isabelle Roughol. I'm a journalist based in London who's moved around the world a lot and with a complex portfolio career you can learn more about at www.isabelleroughol.com. I'm currently completing a Master's degree in Public History & Heritage at Birkbeck College, University of London. I hold a Bachelor's of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, in the United States.

I am French and British and that's the history I know and have access to. This newsletter and podcast will mostly cover this part of the world, sometimes a bit further afield. This project has no pretence of exhaustiveness or representativity. I only write what I know.

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