00:00Research has shown that women in UK history have been largely underrepresented throughout history
00:05and so it's all about trying to redress that balance now and with Ancestry we're really trying
00:11to bring women a little bit more to the fore so that people have a better understanding of history
00:16as a whole. Women's contributions have been systematically underrepresented in records
00:21because for the longest time their identities were subsumed by the husbands. Just think of the maiden
00:26name. You lose it as soon as you get married and this is what's happened throughout history which
00:31makes it really hard to actually find out what they did. If you ask any member of the public 57
00:35% can
00:36easily name male historical figures but can't as many women. Okay so the big book to me is the weight
00:45of history around men, male historical figures. The little book is where women sit. Look at the
00:52contrast we need to fill in those missing pages where women are in fact missing. Ancestry has unveiled
01:01its missing pages installation at London's Pottersfield Park just by Tower Bridge in what is a powerful
01:08visualization highlighting new research which reveals women accounts for just 19% of named historical
01:16figures in UK KS3 history textbooks. This is in contrast to 81% of content which focuses on men's
01:24lived experiences. Discovering about my ancestor she was a pioneering doctor in the early 1900s in a time
01:33when it was a male dominated society. Seeing her celebrated today makes me so proud to see that
01:42that Ancestry have recognised her as part of their campaign. What Ancestry would like to do is build
01:49a better future by focusing on the past and restoring women's stories to history. Through our records
01:55Ancestry allows the identities of women to come to the surface. There are so many extraordinary stories
02:01about ordinary women that are just lying in the records of history. The three pillars of the Parity
02:05Principle are the agency test, the presence test and the structural test. By focusing on these we can really
02:11restore the names of women and learn more about their place in history. Together with Ancestry we've
02:17developed the Parity Principle and this is a new framework to encourage educators to look back at
02:22the past and look at what women did. So rather than just looking at women as being a wife of
02:27someone
02:28it's to look at that person that woman individually and see what did she achieve and how does she represent
02:33women as a whole from that time. So I hope that as a result of the Parity Principle and this
02:40research
02:40that more people will be interested in looking at the women and their female ancestors themselves.
02:45So I hope that they go to Ancestry and that they go and look at their the historical records so
02:50they
02:50can find out what their ancestors actually did and then as a result that can really help us understand
02:55how wonderful the past was and how important these women were.
02:59You
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