A woman caring for a sick parent, a teacher staying late for a struggling child, or someone fighting an unfair system can seem to be doing something small. Yet history is often changed by precisely these acts of patience, care and persistence. The harder question is why qualities so easily dismissed as gentle or ordinary can matter so much in a world built around power and progress.
That tension was at the heart of a message Queen Elizabeth II delivered in her 1966 Christmas Broadcast, when she reflected on the changing role of women and the struggles they had helped confront.
