In Sweden the number of women vs men in history books is currently under debate. Many feminist organisations argue that the numbers should be more (some argue entirely) equal.
I believe there are a lot more men involved in significant historical events simply because of the social structures favoring men that were more present in the past. Simply increasing the number of women could give the impression that social sexism was never something that significantly impacted the course of history. It would be better to highlight that women were not given the same chance to impact history due to sexism or social structures. Not to mention that it would probably also be factually incorrect to fill the history books with women, just to fill a quota. History books in my opinion should obviously feature important events and the people who were involved or caused them.
So, am I right in believing there is indeed fewer women of significant importance in history or is this the result of current social structures favoring men in history?
EDIT: A link to a (swedish) newspaper where they discovered that the rate of women in history books is roughly 13%.
EDIT 2: I should probably rephrase my question. Because of the limited scope of the textbooks, more women can't just be added in the book and double the number of pages. And since my educational background in history mostly includes the textbooks being debated I can't really think of many women to replace commonly referenced men with.
Are there many specific women through history who are overlooked, perhaps in favor of a man?
One of the most fundamental questions that historians in any field argue over is what's important about a particular story, era, or community. One reason men have featured more prominently in some historical work is that some historians have privileged spheres dominated by men. If I, as an author, believe that the course of history is only changed by politicians and diplomats hashing things out in committee meetings and closed-door sessions -- and most of those politicians and diplomats are men -- it's likely that my work would feature more men than women.
The sticking point is the assumption that these sorts of traditionally male-dominated spheres are the only spaces that have a meaningful impact on history. There's certainly nothing wrong with producing historical scholarship that focuses disproportionately on male figures if that's appropriate to the work. But there is a problem when historians reflexively dismiss traditionally female-dominated spheres as unimportant or exclude female figures from their work. One of a historian's most important jobs is to think critically about these sorts of assumptions, not to blindly reinforce them.
There are many books that make some version of this claim, but if you're interested in a somewhat early example you might take a look at Jeanne Boydston's Home and Work: Household, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. Boydston is concerned with how to map the domestic value of activities like housework in the early US in relation to the broader US economy, and in identifying a historical moment in which that labor began to be marked as unimportant or unproductive in US history. The assumption that female economic activity didn't count, in order words, was one that arose at a particular historical moment and that Boydston believes shouldn't be accepted uncritically by contemporary scholars. Something similar can be said of many traditionally female activities that have been excluded or underrepresented in some historical scholarship (and in places like school textbooks).
Otherwise, I'm really not on board with the idea that excluding women from historical work is the best way to highlight sexism. The solution is to reevaluate what it means to have an impact on history, and to speak directly to sexism itself.