In the same way, I would never support gangs that steal, maim, kill, or engage in other harmful acts—but the fact that a 40 member girl gang may have been running around in 18th century London, doing most of the shoplifting in a ruthless and cunning fashion, well, is sort of cool.
I read somewhere that women’s history—or, more importantly, women in history as it is portrayed—is often like the lost and found department. It’s usually skipped over, and every time we hear or read anything about women in history, we’re so impressed or bewildered or simply don’t know what to do with the information. Does it change our place in time? Does it impact how women were really living throughout history, since there are so fewer accounts than those of men? (And they say that keeping a diary is a girlie thing.) How much about history that includes or impacts women do we not know? As a woman, maybe I’m biased, but I’d sure love to know more—as well as read more history books from the perspective of women rather than men.
This gang of women, the Forty Elephants, may have ruled a huge chunk of the criminal underground of London for two hundred years. That’s a pretty big chunk of history that we’ve seldom, if never, heard about, right? And like modern day females, the band of forty thieves were extremely organized and tightly run, making them a very successful operation. (I’m not trying to give modern day females any ideas, of course; just pointing out the obvious!) It was considered the most effective operation during its time period, which makes me even more convinced that women should be much more represented in politics. Not only are we 51% of the population with an enormously disproportionate level of “representation;” we also seem to operate well as criminals and if that’s the case, politics should be a piece of cake!