I never set out to compare Grace Darling and Mary Anning. It happened by accident—over coffee, as these things often do. A friend mentioned a recent visit to the area where Grace Darling and her father famously rowed out into a storm to rescue survivors from a shipwreck. Most people know that story. Statues were built. Paintings created. She became a national symbol of bravery.

It got me thinking.

Not long after, I remembered Mary Anning—one of the most remarkable fossil hunters and scientific minds of her time. Unlike Grace, Mary didn’t become a household name, not then. In fact, during her lifetime, her work was often ignored, misattributed, or quietly absorbed into the reputations of male scientists. And yet, she and Grace were contemporaries. They walked the same world, breathed the same air. One was celebrated, the other overlooked.

And I found myself asking: Why?

Part of it, I suspect, is drama. Grace’s story had everything newspapers loved—danger, heroism, a woman doing something most men wouldn’t dare. And perhaps that’s the point. Grace was celebrated precisely because her actions defied what people thought a woman could do. Her father was there too, of course—but that’s not what made the story memorable.

Mary, on the other hand, was quietly brilliant. She didn’t seek headlines. She discovered some of the most important fossils in history, and her work helped shape modern paleontology. But she didn’t fit the image of what “genius” looked like. She wasn’t wealthy. She wasn’t male. And she didn’t have the institutional backing to defend her place in history. So she slipped through the cracks.

We see this pattern again and again. Think of Rosalind Franklin and the now-famous Photo 51. Her work was central to understanding the structure of DNA, and yet for years it was Watson and Crick who got the credit. It’s almost always the same story—extraordinary contributions, quietly erased or minimized when they come from the “wrong” kind of person.

We remember Boudicca because she defied the Romans. Elizabeth I because she spoke like a king. It seems society is willing to remember women only when they behave like the men history already celebrates.

That’s why Equality Without Distinction matters. It's not about removing names or faces—it’s about removing the conditions that decide whose name we remember. It’s about recognising that the value of a contribution shouldn’t depend on gender, class, or public drama.

Grace rowed into a storm. Mary dug through stone. Both left a legacy—but only one was celebrated in her time. That says more about us than it does about them.