Two years ago, I wrote a post over at Feministe calling out
Google Doodles – described by Google as “changes that are made
to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and the
lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists” – for
pretending women haven’t existed for most of history. At the
time, I counted only 8 women out of the 109 birthdays that had
been celebrated in the program’s history. This has irked me
every time I’ve seen a Doodle honoring a dude since I wrote that
post but I stopped blogging, got a full time job, and never went
back to count again. Until this morning, when I saw that today’s
Doodle is honoring Howard Carter, the British archaeologist
credited with discovering Egyptian King Tutankhamen’s tomb and
accused, by some, of stealing artifacts from his famous find. I
wondered, ‘how is Google doing on representing women’s history
in 2012?’ The answer is sad and disappointing, if not
surprising. Of 48 global Google Doodles honoring birthdays in
2012, 5 have honored women. That’s 1