Review: 'Uncredited: Women's Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work' by Allison Tyra

It should be a universally acknowledged truth by now that women have been accomplishing amazing things for as long as humanity has existed. Unfortunately, as the patriarchy is also a truth, the work women have done has long been overlooked, misattributed and stolen. In Uncredited, Allison Tyra tells the stories of more than 600 women to whom this applies. As the size suggests, there isn't always space for nuance, but this is nonetheless an important read. Thanks to Rising Action Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the delay in reviewing!

Pub. Date: 06/05/2025
Publisher: Rising Action Publishing

Containing the histories of over 600 overlooked or disregarded women, Uncredited is a testament to women's perseverance and the recognition they deserve for their accomplishments.

Women's accomplishments across history are showcased as aberrations or surprising facts. Little thought is often given to the reasons why most of our lauded scientists, reporters, sports stars, politicians, and businesspeople all seem to be men.

Uncredited proves that not only have there been hundreds of ground-breaking women in all professions, but that their accomplishments have been overlooked, denigrated, or downright repressed by their male colleagues or historians. Uncredited explores why women have not been properly acknowledged for their accomplishments, both historically and today.

This book combines research and statistics with the stories of more than 600 women, and is both an academic source and a fascinating read. Prepare to be frustrated with the history you've been denied but also inspired by these hidden trailblazers.

To paraphrase modern philosopher Taylor Swift, I have been afflicted by a terminal uniqueness condition: I am an (early career) researcher. I have spent the last decade or so diving deeply into a specific topic, learning how to establish my hypotheses and conduct my research, and ensuring I am nuanced in my statements and can back them up. As such, whenever I read anything that is on the side of popular history or popular academic work, I run into some issues. The issue is usually not that what is said is entirely incorrect, it is just that most of such writing does not allow for the kind of nuance I am now trained in. I ran into the same issue with Uncredited, when, in its chapter on 'Scholarly Androcentrism', it addressed the grave in Birka which was assumed to be the grave of a male warrior when it was first discovered in the 1800s. When in 2017 scientists discovered that the one buried was biologically female, it caused a lot of conversations. As someone who works on female characters in Old Norse literature, this is of course something I have read a lot about, talk about a lot, and even write about. In Uncredited, the conversation around what this discovery means, whether we can equate our modern understandings of sex and gender onto the Middle Ages, and what this single grave means for the reality of women's lived experience throughout those centuries, is labelled as "scholarly androcentrism" and dismissed. While there are absolutely sexist scholars and scientists who do their very best to suppress anything they do not like, that isn't true for most of us who are trying to be careful in what we assume. This dismissal isn't helped by the fact that the sources cited in the chapter are not actual scholarship but mostly magazines aimed at a general audience and popular history. Again, these are very useful sources when it comes to getting a general picture of a topic, but they do not necessarily capture a complete or nuanced image. (If you want to read more about the grave, I can suggest 'Viking warrior woman? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581' by Price et al., you can also find it on ResearchGate.) My "issue" with this, I am aware, stems from my own background and will not be an issue for most readers, but going into Uncredited it is important to know that it is very broad in focus and cannot get into the actual nitty-gritty of most of the topics it addresses.

Uncredited is divided into 90 chapters, which is a lot and is also why this book comes in at just over 500 pages. The chapters have titles such as '23. Censorship', '49. Giving Husbands the Credit', and '76. Women Bringing Women Down'. Most of the chapters are around 10 pages and cover a set of women and events to whom the chapter title applies. In the 66th chapter, 'You Talk Too Much', for example, covers Japanese President Yoshiro Mori resigning after complaining about women speaking too much, a viral tweet, Tyra's own experiences, and various research papers on how much women actually speak and how. Chapter 39, 'Geology and Paleontology', discussed overlooked female scientists such as Charlotte Murchison and Mary Anning and is roughly three pages long. The book ranges broadly and widely, pulling from Twitter discussions and history, from statistical reports to magazine reports. If you have a particular interest, you will find a chapter covering it in this book so you can explore the women who have contributed to this interest.

I have laid out my main issue with Uncredited above and I do want to say I find the aim of the book very laudable. It is, as I say at the start of this review, undeniable that female contributions, female work, and female accomplishments have been dismissed and suppressed. Allison Tyra has clearly done her research in order to cover a broad range of topics and it shows in the breadth of material she presents. While, as I said above, I would have preferred an added focus on scholarly and specialised research, I can also appreciate that might not be possible at this scale. A bonus for the book is that the writing is relatively informal and therefore very accessible and Tyra frequently shares her own experiences as well. With how enormous the book is, it should very much be treated as a reference work and Tyra herself encourages this as well in the Introduction. The point of Uncredited is to collect these countless stories into one place, so that the pattern they show becomes undeniable. Our task, as the reader, is to take the next step, to educate ourselves, and to take action in real life when we see a similar pattern emerge. Uncredited is written in such a way that I think this will indeed be what most readers do and for that it deserves its laurels.

I give this book...

4 Universes!

Uncredited is a very important book for the patterns it demonstrates and wants to address and for that reason I'm rating this a four. Women's work is too easily overlooked or pushed away and by learning of these women, we might prevent the same from happening today. While I have my issues with some of the research, this should not dissuade anyone from making Uncredited the beginning of a long journey of learning about awesome women!