How to Erase a Woman

How to Erase a Woman is a razor-sharp takedown of a phenomenon known as the Matilda Effect - the systematic marginalisation of women's contributions to history, named after the nineteenth-century polymath Matilda Joslyn Gage. Who? Well, the fact that you probably haven't heard of her is rather the point. The poster child for the Matilda Effect is arguably Rosalind Franklin of DNA-discovery fame, but there are countless women who have had their work co-opted by others (let's face it, mainly men). How about Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist who discovered pulsars but was excluded from the Nobel Prize? Or Nettie Stevens, whose pioneering work on sex chromosomes was attributed to a male colleague? Or those in other fields, such as the artist whose work was secretly appropriated by her own husband, or the nineteenth-century female inventor whose idea was stolen and patented by a man? Fortunately, the indomitable Ria Lina - standup comedian and PhD-holding scientist in her own right - is here to right these wrongs and celebrate these overlooked and undervalued women. Laced with biting humour and lashings of outrage, this is feminism at its most funny and furious.