History Main / BehindEveryGreatMan

-> ''“I worked my way up to be a GM at a Sbarro in Tel Aviv. Then one day I’m stuffing couscous into a calzone, and I realized a woman’s life is worth nothing unless she’s making a great man greater.”''
-->-- '''Amy Schumer''', “[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDk5wDBR3hA Foodroom]],” ''Inside Amy Schumer''

...stands an even greater woman!

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* A variation in ''GreysAnatomy''. Meredith comes up with a method to attempt to cure a specific kind of brain tumor with a viral injection. She enlists Derek's help, and the two perform clinical trials on patients who have exhausted all other options. While most of their patients die, they are able to successfully cure one and publish their findings. Derek ends up being the one who gets all the credit for inventing the "Sheppard method". Meredith is pissed for not even being mentioned in the article. Derek chides her for acting emotional and immature, claiming credit doesn't matter. Besides, he is the attending doctor, while she was just a resident. As such, all the risk was his, so it would make sense that the reward would be his as well. After Bailey confronts him about this, she explains that Meredith doesn't really care about her name in the article, only that Derek acknowledge that her help was invaluable. He does it, and the matter is never brought up again.

Or in about a hundred variations is a StockPhrase referring to how people rarely achieve greatness without support structures that go generally unappreciated, and said support structure is a traditionally female role via being the wife, mother, or sometimes another relation. This trope is specifically about a man who is credited with something important, but it is at some level a bit of a fraud.

Or in about a hundred variations is a StockPhrase referring to how people rarely achieve greantess without support structures that go generally unappreciated, and said support structure is a traditionally female role via being the wife, mother, or sometimes another relation. This trope is specifically about a man who is credited with something important, but it is at some level a bit of a fraud.

Or in about a hundred variations is a StockPhrase referring to how people rarely achieve greantess without support structures that go generally unappreciated, and said support structure is a traditionally female role via being the wife, mother, or sometimes another relation. This trope is specifically about a man who is credited with something important, but its at some level a bit of a fraud.

* In ''The Secret History of the Mongol Queens'' author Jack Weatherford's basic thesis is more/less that this trope writ large was the case for UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan's ''entire empire''. Mongol women were traditionally expected to manage wealth and run matters while the men were at war (they owned the carts and yurt tents for example) and this was applied through Genghis Khan's daughters and wives of his sons. While all the men were off conquering the world women held key administrative posts and exercised considerable influence in matters of succession. All perhaps stemming from the circumstances of Genghis Khans own upbringing where his mother Hoelun was the only reason he lived to adulthood after his minor chieftan father was poisoned and his followers abandoned the family, leaving him with considerable respect for women.

* [[UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft President Taft]] his immediate predecessor was another case as Helen "Nellie" Taft was a far more natural politician then her husband who as a devoted lawyer dreamed only of sitting on the Supreme Court (Which he eventually did do, becoming the only person to ever have served as President and Chief Justice). She once claimed in her youth she the man she would marry [[{{Foreshadowing}} would be the President of the United States.]] Sadly this time it was the wife who suffered the debilitating stroke and never recovered completely.

* [[UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft President Taft]] his immediate predecessor was another case as Helen "Nellie" Taft was a far more natural politician then her husband who as a devoted lawyer dreamed only of sitting on the Supreme Court. She once claimed in her youth she the man she would marry [[{{Foreshadowing}} would be the President of the United States.]] Sadly this time it was the wife who suffered the debilitating stroke and never recovered completely.

* In ''The Secret History of the Mongol Queens'' author Jack Weatherford's basic thesis is more/less that this trope writ large was the case for GenghisKhan's ''entire empire''. Mongol women were traditionally expected to manage wealth and run matters while the men were at war (they owned the carts and yurt tents for example) and this was applied through Genghis Khan's daughters and wives of his sons. While all the men were off conquering the world women held key administrative posts and exercised considerable influence in matters of succession. All perhaps stemming from the circumstances of Genghis Khans own upbringing where his mother Hoelun was the only reason he lived to adulthood after his minor chieftan father was poisoned and his followers abandoned the family, leaving him with considerable respect for women.

This trope is about a man who is credited with something important. He could be a noted scientist, a great scholar, a famous artist; regardless, everybody who's anybody knows his name.

The only thing is, he's not the one who's doing it. Someone else is. And "someone else" is a woman. Maybe it's his wife, maybe it's his sister or his cousin. Whoever she is, ''he's'' getting the credit for ''her'' work.

Please note that this trope is specifically for cases where a woman cannot claim credit for her own work ''because'' she is a woman. Situations where a man claims credit for his assistant's work, and the assistant just happens to be female, would go under TheManBehindTheMan.

* After UsefulNotes/WoodrowWilson's stroke, his wife [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bolling_Galt_Wilson#Unofficial_acting_presidency Edith]] is commonly thought to have invoked this trope. All she would ever admit to was sorting matters into "worth bothering Woodrow about" and "let it wait", and summarizing documents in the first category so Woodrow wouldn't have to read them himself. And maybe she ''didn't'' make decisions as if she were President; but by controlling the flow of information to and from him, she had a lot of control over Presidential decisions.

Please note that this trope is specifically for cases where a woman cannot claim credit for her own work because she is a woman. Situations where a man claims credit for his assistant's work, but the assistant just happens to be female, would go under TheManBehindTheMan.

* After Woodrow Wilson's stroke, his wife [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bolling_Galt_Wilson#Unofficial_acting_presidency Edith]] is commonly thought to have invoked this trope. All she would ever admit to was sorting matters into "worth bothering Woodrow about" and "let it wait", and summarizing documents in the first category so Woodrow wouldn't have to read them himself. And maybe she ''didn't'' make decisions as if she were President; but by controlling the flow of information to and from him, she had a lot of control over Presidential decisions.

* This trope became motive for murder in ''DetectiveConan'': a tenured male professor plagiarizes the work of one of his female students, telling her point blank that nobody would've taken her paper seriously if she'd published it under her own name.

* ''[[ElementalMasters The Fire Rose]]'': At one point, Rose thinks back to a fellow student who had both courted her and stolen her research paper (instead of doing the coursework himself). She wondered at the time if it would really be so bad to let her husband present her research as his own. It ends up a moot point as the student in question was only interested in her father's money; when the money was lost to a scammer, the student dumped Rose.

* TheStepfordWives: The town mayor is leading the task of remaking all the women in the city. [[spoiler:The mayor himself is a cyborg, created by his wife, who feels ambitious women ruin a marriage]].

* In ''ThePillarsOfTheEarth'', Aliena is driven by ambition to regain her family's power and vengeance against the people who took it (and killed their father), but frequently has to use her meek and timid brother William to do it because people won't listen to her alone.

* ''Series/{{Warehouse 13}}'': Helena G. Wells is actually the one responsible for writing WarOfTheWorlds and TheTimeMachine, but she gives her brother the credit so that she can work on her scientific endeavors in peace.

'''Examples:'''

* Almost happened to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#Nobel_Prizes Marie Curie]]. The original nomination for the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics just named Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. Pierre filed a complaint about the committee leaving Marie's important work out. Marie's name was added to the Nobel Prize award.

* One Creator/AgathaChristie novel had a chemist whose wife was murdered. The chemist was later kidnapped by a rich millionaire who wanted a monopoly over the greatest scientific minds in the world (in exchange for giving them a place where their genius would not be limited by lack of funds or political alignment). Unfortunately, it turns out the chemist isn't producing anything because the brilliant discovery (that got him kidnapped in the first place) was actually his wife's work, and he murdered her to take the credit for it.