Campaign launched to cement legacy of Cambridgeshire women into history
It's part of a drive to highlight the work of women who remain absent from British history
There are calls for three women from Cambridgeshire to be cemented in Britain's history books for their achievements in a drive to tackle gender imbalance.
The stories of scientist Lise Meitner, barrister Elsie May Wheeler and auctioneer Elsie Daking are some of the 25 women who will be recognised as part of a campaign to highlight the contributions made by women to British history but remain absent from public memory.
The project also aims to see if women are truly represented in historical accounts and encourages people to discover the forgotten women in their own families.
In response, historian Dr Amy Boyington and Ancestry have developed the Parity Principle Test, the first formal framework designed to assess whether women are genuinely represented in historical accounts.
"Only 19% of the mentions of historical figures in key stage three texts and materials are mentioning women; this is 2026, right?" Dr Boyington said.
New research has found less than one in five named figures in UK school history textbooks are women.
The test devised by Dr Boyington asks three questions:
• Are named women central to the narrative?
• Are they presented as active agents in their own right?
• Does the account reflect the breadth of women's lived experiences?
Who are the Cambridgeshire women being highlighted?
Lise Meitner, who spent her final years in Cambridge, played a key role in discovering nuclear fission, but the 1944 Nobel Prize was awarded to her male collaborator.
Elise May Wheeler studied at Girton College in Cambridge and is known to be the first female barrister to actively practise in England after being called to the Bar in 1922.
She operated on the south east circuit before joining the Home Office and retired in St Ives.
Elsie Daking is one of the first women to gain recognition as a professional auctioneer, specialising in livestock sales in Peterborough in what was a male-dominated industry.
Research has found more than half of Britons say they are more confident naming male historical figures than female ones, while two thirds are calling for a formal review of the national curriculum.
The launch of the campaign marks the first time historians, educators, publishers and the public have been given a practical benchmark for measuring gender representation in history.
"It seems as though men are the ones who shaped history and because of how society was structured, for most of history that is true to an extent, but it doesn't make women's achievements any less notable or significant," Dr Boyington added.