A while back, when I was first really getting the hang of Tumblr, I came across a wonderful blog there that told the story of one amazing woman every day. Of course I immediately followed it! And every day since I have been happy I did. While the daily posts are on hiatus for a while, she is still sharing great posts found elsewhere, and thus my timeline is continually filled with inspirational stories of women have done great things.
Recently, I was fortunate to be able to chat with Caitlin, the creator and driving force behind Calendar Women.
SRPS: First of all, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? What's your background? What inspires you?
CW: My name is Caitlin and I am a film and television graduate and history buff. My passion is factual programming and documentaries as they offer us a glimpse into worlds that we would never otherwise experience or understand, though depending on who is telling the story certain details can get warped. True stories from history have always fascinated me as often they are much stranger than fiction. I love trying to understand the strength or fortitude of women who have faced down oppressive regimes, liberated people, or defied expectations and forged a new life for themselves – I often find myself wondering what I would have done if I found myself in their situations.
SRPS: What is Calendar Women? What inspired you to create it?
CW: Calendar Women started out as a daily blog with posts about various women both from history and women who are still alive, from all across the world. I began it for several reasons; the first reason was to develop my writing skills. I am not a confident writer by any means and as my New Year's resolution I wanted to write every day about something that fascinated me – the lives of women. I'm happy to say that it's the first resolution I've ever kept and I'd like to think my writing skills have somewhat improved along the way!
My second reason for starting a blog was the absolute dearth of information about women from our past – through history lessons at school we predominantly learn about the achievements of men, with the assumption being that women were passively waiting at home with the children. The few women we do learn about tend to be Queens or martyrs and yet there have been so many incredible women from all walks of life, with different ideals, different achievements and certainly different ideas of the role of women in society. They give us a new perspective on cultures, events or stories we think we know, and combined with the more 'popular' details of male exploits give us a richer view of history.
It is a shame that we learn so little from conventional education, and even researching this I found myself frustrated by the lack of information freely available online about many of the women I was looking into. Tumblr has several blogs dedicated to the contributions of women, both past and present, and I think it's incredibly important that we use the resources we have now to make sure that we keep researching and sharing the stories of these women lest they be completely forgotten.
