Banning Women
Award-winning non-fiction writer and journalist Rachel Hewitt unearths and writes about various corners of women’s history - and the subsequent erasure of that same history - showing us how women are indeed equal participants in all aspects of public life - until we are banned, excluded and erased.
In her latest book, In Her Nature, Rachel looks at women’s accomplishments in sports and the great outdoors from the Victorian era to the present, and chronicles the various ways in which men organized to exclude and ban women from athletics and the outdoors - and more broadly from public spaces and public life.
In her writings, which includes the brilliant Substack Small Revolutions, Every Day, Rachel makes crucial connections between women’s hidden history and how women navigate our current-day climate of rising misogyny. She also writes about feminism, grief, trauma and recovery - and her own experiences as an ultra-runner.
In this episode Elle and Rachel cover a sprawling map of topics, from Rachel’s research and writing about women’s history in sports and outdoors adventure, to how women navigate public spaces - now and then, the constantly changing shape of misogyny and how women weigh being safe against being free. We also talk about Rachel’s own running career, and how immersion in nature can carry you through grief and trauma, and much, much more.
EPISODE LINKS
Family Fortunes by Leonore Davidoff, Catherine Hall
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Rachel Hewitt
Author, Journalist and Teacher
Rachel Hewitt is author of four works of creative non-fiction, including the best-selling Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey and In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors. She is also a critic, broadcaster, journalist, creative writing teacher, ultra-runner and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She writes a popular Substack newsletter called Small Revolutions, Every Day, which explores grief, trauma and recovery through a feminist lens, and she lives in North Yorkshire, in the UK.