"Her story" is a supplement of the traditional "his story" or history. It is a matter of restoring what is missing.
"History is written by the winners". There are a lot of excellent articles, and blogs, available about how history is there to be learned from -- or ignoring history means to repeat it -- or other related topics about the importance of history in making decisions for the present to prepare for the future. An excellent topic and I may write about it some day. But this is not that blog.
In order to chronicle every single event that occurs in all of our lifetimes, it would be necessary to double the amount of time available. We would spend one half of the time documenting the other half. Although many of our various global national security agencies monitor (legally or illegally) and document our conversations, messages, program watching habits, books checked out, and so forth, they have neither the time nor the resources to examine all of them. They use algorithms to narrow down what they look at (accurately or not, relevant or not). One gains privacy only by being totally uninteresting.
The point of the previous paragraph is that any history that is written will be incomplete. History is written by the winners is an accurate split of accounts of war. Winners write the primary histories and their "side" will be uplifted and the opposition downgraded. Commanding officers will be given the largest portion of credit (or blame) while the many ordinary fighting (and dying) soldiers may not even get a name on their grave.
If an extraterrestrial alien obtained one of our history books, they would get a very sad view as much of history in textbooks are concerned with battles and war. Alas, there is rarely a period of time when a war is NOT going on so there is plenty of material. But what about all of those people who are NOT at war, who are living on a regular, day-to-day, basis? Very hard to find in the history textbooks. They just weren't "important enough" to keep track of.
Emphasis on wars and battles from the viewpoint of the "winners". Concentration on the political, economic, and military elite. There is so much of life that is left unwritten in the typical history textbook.
And this is while we make the (rarely true) assumption that history, that has succeeded in being written down, does accurately reflects that small slice of life being recorded. History has the danger of being rewritten at all times. Sometimes deliberately to hide what people would prefer to not be remembered. Sometimes accidentally through destruction of records and witnesses. But in all cases, due to the incompleteness of the histories, so much is not recorded that one can only see the rest of life in the shadows of those of whom the light is shone upon.
So, what gets eliminated the most often? The poor, the non-dominant ethnic and religious groups, and the very existent but denigrated segments of population. Archaeologists are thrilled to come up with exciting old sarcophagi with jewels or the burial chambers of ancient rulers because those are the finds that generate sufficient excitement to obtain funding for further excavations. But historians are even more excited when evidence of, and material pertaining to, the excluded people are found. These masses -- composing the overwhelming majority of the population -- are the ones who really make life continue and, yet, so little is known about them from different ages and societies.
The fact that history books, and classes, are incomplete (of necessity and of deliberation) is the reason why excluded segments work hard to get supplemental materials added to school and college curriculum and included as a part of our general knowledge of our history. In the case of the often excluded roles, actions, and events concerning women, such additions are sometimes called "herstory". These concentrate on "her story" rather than "his story". There are books, and classes, that concentrate on other denigrated segments such as the First Nation people within the US, Ainu in Japan, aborigines in Australia, and so forth all over the world, the many waves of immigrants into the US, and so forth.
If one looks at these supplemental works, and courses, it is easy to say "these are not accurate" -- because they are, like mainstream history texts, incomplete. Because their focus is different from the mainstream histories which are widely available throughout the population, these supplemental materials can make people uncomfortable when they are presented with information of which they had been uninformed. Often there is a reaction to suppress this information which as been neglected over the years -- but this does not make that neglected information false.
History is written by the winners about those people, and events, that those in power deem important. But there is so very much more to life than just that.
