Women face being erased from another A Level syllabus. But carry on with the International Men's Day celebrations

International Men’s Day is upon us and as much as I respect the need for male space, I don’t feel that men, in their privileged status, really need it. Before I am accused of getting on my feminist high-horse, hear this: the government have just announced plans to revise the Politics A-Level Curriculum. This might sound like a good idea, but it seems that rather than pioneering a new way of thinking, we are regressing back to a time where women were seen and not heard, spoken over and spoken for, dictated to and functionally erased from history. Feminism has been removed entirely as a political movement from the curriculum, and the Suffragettes have been relegated to a sub-section about “pressure group methods”.

Not enough for you? Then consider that Mary Wollstonecraft is now the only female thinker in the entire proposed A Level Politics syllabus, squashed in under “liberalism” which defines the key thinkers as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls.

It appears that the efforts women make to have a voice and to be represented in society are fruitless: our history often falls on deaf ears and our experiences are rarely considered valid. This feels like not so much a step back as the final nail in the coffin. You’d assume that we might have moved on, perhaps progressing into an era where our experiences are seen as just as valid as those of men – but I suppose our beloved government and Ofqual, in all their wisdom, have spent the last fifty years holding their hands over their ears and singing loudly to drown out the sound of women’s voices getting louder.

So, in a culture where women are underrepresented, a pay gap still remains and sexual assault is at an all-time high, what are we expected to make of this lack of support by the government for women? It is abhorrent to expect women to accept this secondary position and David Cameron could do so much more to make inroads in addressing this problem. It needs to be recognised that feminism isn’t favouring one gender over another; instead it is acknowledging that success, having a voice, visibility and respect are qualities to be attributed to both men and women. By erasing women from historical politics the government is further perpetuating and favouring HIStory over HERstory, but that shouldn’t be the case.

Where, in this brave new world of politics, is the acclaimed writer and gender campaigner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie? What about Andrea Dworkin, or Germaine Greer? Even Mary Beard, who spoke out against sexist expectations in the media, Nimko Ali, who leads a prominent movement to tackle FGM, or the world-famous Malala Yousafzai?

In fact, there are plenty of instances of women changing the world and society that can be plucked from the last five years alone – there is a whole plethora of female history to be explored between the Suffragette movement and this century. These women have contributed to international politics and to ignore their contributions is to do the youth of today a great disservice.

Feminism is a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that girls and boys need to be taught about in A Level classrooms. For girls denied the ability to learn about thinkers and doers who look and sound like them, it is a catastrophic loss of role models to deny them this. And for boys, it is a denial of valuable knowledge.

Earlier this year, student Jessy McCabe petitioned for and succeeded in putting women on the music curriculum, after she discovered that the Edexcel A Level syllabus didn’t mention a single woman in their list of composers and contributors to music. It’s clear, then, that unless we call them out, educators in the UK right now have a real blind spot when it comes to women. So while we celebrate International Men’s Day today, and talk about the male role models we’re inundated with already, let’s remember to spare a thought for the women’s views and voices that have been erased from what our children are taught about international politics.

Sign the Change.org petition to put feminism back on the Politics curriculum