How to Erase a Woman

How to Erase a Woman is a razor-sharp takedown of the phenomenon known as the Matilda Effect - the systematic marginalisation of women's contributions to history, named for the nineteenth-century polymath Matilda Joslyn Gage. Haven't heard of her? Well, that's the point. How about the geologist who mapped the entire ocean floor despite not being allowed on a boat? Or the woman who saved over a thousand Jews from the Nazis but never got her own movie? How about the self-taught engineer who built a world-famous bridge by pretending to be her husband, or the bestselling commercial artist whose husband signed his own name to her work? Fortunately, the indomitable Ria Lina - standup comedian, former IT forensic investigator and doctor of virology - is here to right these wrongs. Taking the lives of more than a dozen overlooked figures as a starting point, How to Erase a Woman goes deeper to expose the underlying mechanisms of exclusion. Laced with biting humour and considerable outrage, it's history at its most funny and furious.