Where are the Women?

For most of recorded history, women have been sidelined, if not silenced, by men who named the built environment after themselves. Now is the time to look unflinchingly at Scotland’s heritage and bring those women who have been ignored to light.

Can you imagine a different Scotland, a Scotland where women are commemorated in statues and streets and buildings – even in the hills and valleys? This is a guidebook to that alternative nation, where the cave on Staffa is named after Malvina rather than Fingal, and Arthur’s Seat isn’t Arthur’s, it belongs to St Triduana. You arrive into Dundee at Slessor Station and the Victorian monument on Stirling’s Abbey Hill interprets national identity through the women who ran hospitals during the First World War. The West Highland Way ends at Fort Mary. The Old Lady of Hoy is a prominent Orkney landmark. And the plinths in central Glasgow proudly display statues of the suffragettes who fought until they won.

In this guide, streets, buildings, statues and monuments are dedicated to real women, telling their often unknown stories.

Author Biography

Sara Sheridan, named as one of the Saltire Society’s most influential Scottish women, past and present, has a fascination for uncovering forgotten women from history. As a novelist she is known as the writer of the Mirabelle Bevan mysteries and a series of historical novels based on Georgian and Victorian explorers, including The Fair Botanists set in Regency Edinburgh. As a non-fiction writer she has produced books about the early days of Queen Victoria’s marriage and the historical background to Jane Austen’s novel Sanditon to augment two of ITV’s landmark historical dramas.