Think for yourself about ten names of people who you believe played an important role in world history. Chances are you will immediately come up with names such as Jesus, Mohammed, Genghis Khan, Columbus, Michelangelo, Voltaire, Watt, Smith, or Hitler. Strikingly, they are all men. It is probably not so easy to spontaneously come up with names of women. Yet throughout world history, women have made up half of the population and have always played an important role—how could it be otherwise? The only thing is that we don't know the names nor the role of these women. This problem (because that's what it is) of the underrepresentation of women in our representation of the past is not new. In popular historical culture, women were somewhat present as examples for contemporary women throughout the 19th century, but they disappeared more and more throughout the 20th century. In academic historiography, the second wave of feminism in the 1960s brought more historiographical attention to women, and from the 1990s onwards, gender history made its appearance. In secondary school history textbooks, women were hardly present until the first decades of the 21st century.

This study sought to examine how women are represented in current (until 2023) history textbooks, in chapters about the national past. Which women are mentioned, how, and in what capacity? Are they attributed agency? What is the underlying narrative in which they are mentioned: a liberal narrative of progress, or rather a more conservative narrative? The study was conducted comparatively in Flemish (Belgian) and Hungarian textbooks, because both show interesting similarities (small countries, both members of the EU) and differences (long democratic tradition versus recent post-socialism; democratic constitutional state versus illiberal democracy today; decentralized versus centralized education system), and have a long common history within the Habsburg Empire.

Our analysis shows that, with one exception, women are only rarely mentioned and attributed agency in the most recent history textbooks, either as individuals or as a group. There does seem to be a certain sensitivity among textbook authors to include women. To this end, they adopt a ‘conforming’ and ‘reforming approach’: they add women, via source excerpts from or about women rather than in learning texts, to existing content, within conventional and dominant paradigms. Insights from recent academic historiography are hardly taken into account. For example, there is no mention of gendered history. In Flemish/Belgian textbooks, women are mentioned slightly more as the recent past is covered. This points to an underlying Eurocentric narrative of progress towards more democracy, freedom, and equality. Hungarian textbooks use an underlying nation-state narrative, in which do not appear more. This immediately makes it clear that, despite the common past shared by both countries, there are few common points of content between the textbooks from both countries.

These findings are important for history education, which contributes significantly to young people's social representations of the past and helps shape their worldview. That is why we felt this article was ideal for publication in HERJ, which focuses specifically on history education researchers and educators.

Representations of women and their role within society in the past in Flemish and Hungarian history textbooks by Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse (University of Leuven, Belgium), Balázs Sipos (ELTE University, Hungary), Lies Depickere (University of Leuven, Belgium) and Nóra Lengyel (Ludovika University of Public Service, Hungary) is published in History Education Research Journal, volume 22.

Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse has a PhD in history, and is currently professor in History Didactics at Leuven University (Belgium). His main research interests related to history education are the position of the present, the use of historical sources, the attribution of agency, the link between historical narratives and identification and between historical thinking and civic attitudes, and historical representations of colonial pasts in formal and non-formal educational settings.

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