Her Half of History

The first named author in history was Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, conqueror of Sumeria. Her poems have been called the world's first bestsellers. But she's also been accused of not really writing them. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon page⁠⁠ (...

Many religions and cultures have an answer to Who was the first woman? But the records of those answers were all written thousands of years after any such women lived. For historians, the more answerable question is Who was the first woman named in a record written during or close to her own lifetime? Neithhotep was a queen in Egypt's very first dynasty. Not much is known about her for certain, bu...

Her Half of History turns 5 years old this month! In celebration, I'm taking questions from listeners and they range from the oldest account of childbirth to the reason I started a podcast in the first place. In this episode you will can hear the voices of some of my fellow history podcasters. Please check out their shows for more great history: Civics and Coffee The History Fix Podcast It's a His...

Early anthropologists and archaeologists told us that in foraging societies, women gathered and men hunted. More recent research suggests that women did hunt, but the debate will go on about how much. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. This show survives on the on the support of listeners like you. Support the show on my ⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon page⁠⁠ (https...

Please send me your questions for the Q&A episode to celebrate my 5-year podcast anniversary! There's a spot to do it on the ⁠⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com). If you include contact details, there's a drawing for some free swag for you. Also, the votes are in, and the topic of Series 15 is: The First Woman Who. That will start in January. Visit the ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for so...

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I'm not convinced. Throughout this series on inventions, I noticed that almost all of the inventions I covered clustered in the second half of the 19th century, in a time period known as the Second Industrial Revolution. This episode is a retrospective on some of the factors that made that time period see the invention of more society-changing inv...

Sewing is at least 45,000 years ago, and it was known in nearly every culture on earth, but for millennia it was all done by hand. There are multiple claimants for the inventor of the first sewing machine, but the one who emerged with the US patent was Elias Howe. Unfortunately, his machine didn't really work. This episode tells the story of how that got fixed and how it impacted women. Visit the...

Santa gets more mail every year than any other person on earth, but the earliest letters that I know of were not to him. They were from him. Later on, it became more normal to write to him and ask for what you were hoping to get for Christmas. This episode covers a sampling of letters from the 1850s to the 1950s, and then finishes off with the story behind one of the most famous lines in American...

Most historical women lived and cooked in an era when cold storage meant something like the root cellar or down the well. The ability to keep food at a constant temperature radically changed our relationship with food, both before it arrives in our homes and afterwards. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my ⁠Patreon page⁠ for bonu...

Early details are scarce, but women have been managing periods for millennia, using everything from free bleeding to tampons to sanitary napkins. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my ⁠Patreon page⁠ for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfaction. Or make a one-time donation on ⁠Buy⁠ ⁠Me a Coffee⁠. Join ⁠Into...

Women may not have invented the car, but a woman took the first road trip in one (Bertha Benz) and a woman was the first victim of one (Mary Ward). And when cars came in big time they changed life dramatically for women in particular. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my ⁠Patreon page⁠ for bonus episodes, polls, and a general fee...

It's a bye-week for the podcast, but I have two big announcements! First, November is a month for gratitude, and Her Half of History is donating half of all revenue this month to the nonprofit of your choice. Please visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) to vote. For double the voting power. Visit my Patreon page (https://bit.ly/4nEb6Zu) and vote there too. You don't have to be a supporter to vo...

Diaper duty isn't the funnest part of parenting. But imagine what it was like when there was no such thing as a disposable, and you were also on laundry duty... The disposable diaper was a miracle to many women. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my ⁠Patreon page⁠ for bonus episodes, polls, and a general feeling of self-satisfacti...

Artificial lighting is an invention that has become so ubiquitous in the developed world that many of us barely notice when we use it. But it wasn’t always this way. Many a historical woman noticed big time every day. This episode tells the story from prehistorical oil lamps, to candles, to flipping a switch. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Suppor...

It's spooky season and this is my third annual Halloween episode! It's the story of Aqua Tofana, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and utterly deadly poison invented by a network of female poisoners in 17th century Italy. The music is from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, recorded by The Wichita State University Chamber Players with John Harrison on Violin and Robert Turizziani and as Conducto...

Quite possibly no invention in modern history has done more to change women's lives than the pill so important it can just be called: The Pill. Safe, reliable, relatively easy birth control was a game changer for many (but not all) women. Visit the ⁠website⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. Support the show on my ⁠Patreon page⁠ for bonus episodes, polls, and a general...

The ancient world recorded many means of contraception, some of them reasonable, and some of them bizarre. Many records only say that prostitutes do this well, and do not give the means at all. Records start to get better in the 19th century, but access was limited depending on what part of the world you lived in. In the early 20th century, many activists campaigned for better alternatives and inf...

The problem of what to cook for dinner has been with women for millennia, but for most women in history, the options were limited by modern standards. They ate fresh, local ,and minimally processed. Not because they were healthy and environmentally conscious, but because they had no other ingredients available. Canned goods were invented for the military, not for housewives. But after a great deal...

Historically, women carred an awful lot of water. It was so commonplace that it rarely gets mentioned in the historical record, so the details are scarce. But the search for water sparked invention 10500 years ago when the oldest wells were dug and has continued to inspire countless inventions ever since. Visit the ⁠⁠website⁠⁠ (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources, transcripts, and pictures. This sho...

Until the very recent past, your chances of surviving childhood were iffy. Your chances of losing one or more of your own children were high. The invention of vaccines dramatically improved children's health, but getting there was a challenge for both scientists and policy makers. Vaccine hesitancy is nothing new. The fact that so many of us have never experienced any of the major diseases ranks a...

Over the 19th century, a larger middle-class and better educational opportunities meant that many women had the necessary skills to work in an office. But somehow they never got the job. Instead, they were told they were "superfluous" and "redundant" if they did not get married. The typewriter was the machine that got women in the office door. Visit the website (herhalfofhistory.com) for sources,...

The four biggest natural fibers are wool, cotton, flax, and silk, but none of them naturally come long, continuous, or strong. To make any textile at all, the fibers have to be twisted into thread or yarn by a process called spinning. Historical women all over the world had this as their primary assignment, and it was unbelievably time consuming. Right up until machines could do it better. Then th...

For centuries, one of the biggest causes of maternal death was puerperal fever or postpartum infection. Doctors proposed many theories and many remedies, but they were totally unprepared to accept the truth: doctors were spreading the infection themselves. And all they needed to do was some solid hand washing between each patient. The feature image is by Rasheedhrasheed, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimed...

Susan B Anthony was in her seventies by the time the bicycle was widely available to women, but she admired it all the same and said “a girl never looks so independent, so much as if she felt as good as a boy, as on her wheel." She was, in Susan’s words, “the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” Anthony meant that quite literally because until the 1890s, most women did not have the freedom to...

I'm starting this new series on Inventions that Changed Women's Lives at the very beginning—so early that it predates written history. In this episode, I dive into the origins of agriculture and ask the (possibly) surprising question: Was it actually a bad idea? For many women, life as a hunter-gatherer may have been easier, freer, and more equal than what came after. But it's true that sources ar...