A review of Femina by Janina Ramirez

For a fresh female perspective on stale male history: Janina Ramirez’s Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It (Penguin, 2022) is true to its title and cover. The front image is unabashedly the shape of a reproductive organ as if the book is about to birth these women anew. It does. Ramirez goes on to deliver one female leader after another, from dynamic church influencers to artists and spies, all shakers of history. Ramirez states she is not rewriting history but shifting our approach to the past from the perspective of half the population hitherto overlooked. For example, chapter three (re)introduces one woman, the Birka Warrior, who for a century was miscast as a man because she was buried with an axe, some arrows, a spear, and a sword. Her DNA test in 2017 led to a complete re-evaluation of Viking culture and a legacy of weapon-wielding Viking women in movies ever since.

Available to buy at Femina by Janina Ramirez | Waterstones