By Lyubov Sachkova, alumni MA Public Relations, LCC
The evening was a talk on Tsjeng’s book series Forgotten Women followed by a Q&A, book signing and post-event social.
The latest event of the Feeld Talks series offered a platform for shedding light on Forgotten Women – taking a cue from the book series by Zing Tsjeng, also editor of Broadly, VICE. Speaking with journalist, author and campaigner Victoria Spratt, Zing shared insights about the book series’ origin and the crucial work of reshaping our understanding of female success.
Having published the first two books The Leaders and The Scientists in March 2018, Zing is currently working on the next two editions – The Artists and The Writers.Their popularity and accessibility are part of the project’s political purpose: “I hope by Christmas Forgotten Women will be the DVD box set of feminism”. Zing shared some of the challenges contemporary feminism is facing in terms of recognition historically and socially.
“There are 48 women in each book – the same number of women who have won the Nobel Prize”
Zing also insisted on the importance of archives and printed materials, sharing that without the British Library and its staff, she would have never had the necessary access to all the sources necessary for chronicling female achievement throughout history. She touched on the idea that female success is represented in a framework of comparison to the male figure in society and in a limited set of examples of female leaders – from Margaret Thatcher to Sheryl Sanberg — with the hope that her books will help transcend that narrow idea and allow for new shapes of female success to become more prominent.
Victoria Spratt also touched on an issue that Amnesty International recently paid special attention to female representation on the internet and gender bias on Wikipedia: “The internet – like any book – is a product of its sources. 80% of Wikipedia authors are men”. It is that kind of (often invisible) asymmetry – throughout history as well as today – that projects like Forgotten Women seek to address and provide a necessary corrective to.
The discussion was followed by a Q&A and book signing by Zing, with conversations continuing over drinks at Feeld’s post-event social at The Curtain, London.
