Herstory

Herstory is a term for history written from a feminist perspective and emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman's point of view. It originated as an alteration of the word "history", as part of a feminist critique of conventional historiography, which in their opinion is traditionally written as "his story", i.e., from the male point of view. The term is a neologism since the word "history"—from the Ancient Greek word ἱστορία, or more directly from its Latin derivate historia, meaning "knowledge obtained by inquiry"— is etymologically unrelated to the possessive pronoun his. In fact, Roman languages originally attribute the word to the feminine grammatical form, for instance la storia in Italian - the Romance language most resembling Latin. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Robin Morgan with first using the term "herstory" in print in her 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful. Concerning the feminist organization W.I.T.C.H., Morgan wrote: The fluidity and wit of the witches is evident in the ever-changing acronym: the basic, original title was Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell [...] and the latest heard at this writing is Women Inspired to Commit Herstory. During the 1970s and 1980s, second-wave feminists saw the study of history as a male-dominated intellectual enterprise and presented "herstory" as a means of compensation. The term, intended to be both serious and comic, became a rallying cry used on T-shirts and buttons as well as in academia. In 2017, Hridith Sudev, an inventor, environmentalist and social activist associated with various youth movements, launched 'The Herstory Movement,' an online platform to "celebrate lesser known great persons; female, queer or otherwise marginalized, who helped shape the modern World History." It is intended as an academic platform to feature stories of female historic persons and thus help facilitate more widespread knowledge about 'Great Women' History. Non-profit organizations Global G.L.O.W and LitWorld created a joint initiative called the "HerStory Campaign".