Telling Her Story of War: Challenging Gender Bias at Culloden Battle eld Visitor Centre

Abstract

When live interpretation of women was first introduced at Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre, it received little visitor interest and mixed reactions despite the key roles that women played during the 1745 Jacobite Rising. Consequent experiences with changes to the interpretation suggest that visitors' prior identification of wars with men makes them regard women's interpretation as irrelevant to the war story they came to learn. It appears that interpretation that mixes the stories of men and women can ensure visitors' engagement with interpretation of women at war while at the same time enhancing visitors' ability to personally connect with the interpretive content overall.