A Secret of the Harem

Honoured to be invited to join Council of Global Women's Leadership Programme at Cass Business School and I'm celebrating by sharing the story of a remarkable woman encountered during my research into leading with an explorer’s mindset. Lady Mary Montagu deserves to be better known.

History has often dismissed women as “travellers”, rather than explorers. Where women have appeared more prominently, it isn’t always because they challenged conventions. Sometimes they did just follow their husbands. But while once seen as letter-writers, assistants or housewives, many meet my criteria of an explorer because their narratives demonstrate leadership.

Lady Montagu was the wife of British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1716. Her Embassy Letters challenged many previous-male-accounts because her gender and status gave access to private homes and female only spaces. In a zenana she witnessed inoculation against smallpox, common practice in Turkey but completely unknown in Britain. She inoculated her son and enthusiastically promoted the procedure in London, despite strong resistance and ridicule of her “folk remedy” by the medical establishment. When an epidemic struck, she had her daughter inoculated-the first such operation in Great Britain. Lady Montagu pushed against the boundaries of the Establishment and actively created her own narrative which saved lives and disfigurement from this deadly disease.