Women's history

Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history, together with the methods needed to study women. It includes the study of the history of the growth (and decline) of woman's rights throughout recorded history, the examination of individual woman of historical significance, and the effect that historical events have had on women. Inherent in the study of woman's history is the belief that more traditional recordings of history have minimized or ignored the contributions of women and the effect that historical events had on women as a whole; in this respect, woman's history is often a form of historical revisionism, seeking to challenge or expand the traditional historical consensus.

The main centers of scholarship have been the U.S. and Britain, where 'second wave' feminist historians, influenced by the new approaches promoted by social history, led the way. As activists in the women's liberation, discussing and analyzing the oppression and inequalities they experienced as women, they felt it imperative to find out about the lives of their foremothers -- and found very little scholarship in print. History was written mainly by men and about men's activities in the public sphere -- war, politics, diplomacy and administration. Women were usually excluded and, when mentioned, were usually portrayed in sex-stereotypical roles, such as wives, mothers, daughters and mistresses. History was value laden in regard to what was considered historically 'worthy'.

Regions

Western Europe

Britain

Although in the 21st century women have much the same rights as men, the major changes came in the 19th and 20th century. They ran the household, bore the children, were nurses, mothers, wives, neighbours, friends and teachers, but very little of their activities was formally recorded.

Although some work appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Scottish women's history did not really develop as a field until the 1980's, with most work on women before 1700 appearing in the last two decades. Several recent studies have taken a biographical approach, but other work has drawn on the insights from research elsewhere to examine such issues as work, family, religion, crime, and images of women. Scholars are also uncovering women's voices in their letters, memoirs, poetry, and court records. Because of the late development of the field, much recent work has been recuperative, but increasingly the insights of gender history both in other countries and in Scottish history after 1700 are being used to frame the questions that are asked. Future work should contribute both to a reinterpretation of the current narratives of Scottish history and also to a deepening of the complexity of the history of women in late medieval and early modern Britain and Europe.

France

French historians have taken a unique approach with a great deal of scholarship in women's and gender history despite the lack of women's and gender study programs or departments at the university level. The high level of research and publication in women's and gender history is due to the high interest within French society. This structural discrimination against the study of gender history in France is changing due to international studies increasing with the formation of the European Union and more French scholars seeking appointments outside Europe.

Pre-Revolution

In the Ancien Régime in France very few women held any power—some queens did, as did the heads of Catholic convents. In the Enlightenment the writings of philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau gave political program for reform of the ancien régime, founded on a reform of domestic mores. Rousseau's conception of the relations between private and public spheres is more unified than that found in modern sociology. Rousseau argued that the domestic role of women is a structural precondition for a "modern" society.

Salic law prohibited women from rule; however, the laws for the case of a regency, when the king was too young to govern by himself, brought the queen into the center of power. The queen could assure the passage of power from one king to another—from her late husband to her young son—while simultaneously assuring the continuity of the dynasty.

Education for girls

Educational aspirations were on the rise and were becoming increasingly institutionalized in order to supply the church and state with the functionaries to serve as their future administrators. Girls were schooled too, but not to assume political responsibility. Girls were ineligible for leadership positions and were generally considered to have an inferior intellect to their brothers. France had many small local schools where working-class children - both boys and girls - learned to read, the better "to know, love, and serve God." The sons and daughters of the noble and bourgeois elites, however, were given quite distinct educations: boys were sent to upper school, perhaps a university, while their sisters - if they were lucky enough to leave the house - would be sent to board at a convent with a vague curriculum. The Enlightenment challenged this model, but no real alternative presented itself for female education. Only through education at home were knowledgeable women formed, usually to the sole end of dazzling their salons.

Eastern Europe

Interest in the study of women's history in Eastern Europe has been delayed. Representative is Hungary, where the historiography has been explored by Petö and Szapor (2007). Academia resisted incorporating this specialized field of history, primarily because of the political atmosphere and a lack of institutional support. Before 1945, historiography dealt chiefly with nationalist themes that supported the antidemocratic political agenda of the state. After 1945, academia reflected a Soviet model. Instead of providing an atmosphere in which women could be the subjects of history, this era ignored the role of the women's rights movement in the early 1900s. The collapse of Communism in 1989 was followed by a decade of promising developments in which biographies of prominent Hungarian women were published and important moments of women's political and cultural history were the subjects of research. However, the quality of this scholarship was uneven and failed to take advantage of the methodological advances in research in the West. In addition, institutional resistance continued, as evidenced by the lack of undergraduate or graduate programs dedicated to women's and gender history at Hungarian universities.

Japan

Japanese women's history was marginal to historical scholarship until the late 20th century. The subject hardly existed before 1945 and even after that date many academic historians were reluctant to accept women's history as a part of Japanese history. However, the social and political climate of the 1980s in particular, favorable in many ways to women, gave opportunities for Japanese women's historiography to promote itself and also brought the subject fuller academic recognition. Exciting and innovative research on Japanese women's history began in the 1980s. Much of this has been conducted not only by academic women's historians, but also by freelance writers, journalists, and amateur historians; that is, by people who have been less saddled with traditional historical methods and expectations. The study of Japanese women's history has now reached the point where the subject no longer requires justification.

Themes

Rights and equality

Women's rights refers to the social and human rights of women. In the United States, the abolition movements sparked an increased wave of attention on the status of women, but the History of feminism reaches far back before the 18th century. (See Protofeminist.) The advent of the reformist age during the 19th century meant that those invisible minorities or marginalized majorities were to find a catalyst and a microcosm in such new tendencies of reform. The earliest works on the so-called "woman question" criticized the restrictive role of women, without necessarily claiming that women were disadvantaged or that men were to blame. In the UK, the Feminism movement began in the 1800s and continues in the present day. In the early 20th century, Simone de Beauvoir wrote a detailed analysis of women's oppression. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminist movements, such as the one in the United States substantially changed the condition of women in the Western world. The trigger for the revolution was the development of the birth control pill in 1960, which gave women access to easy and reliable contraception.

Employment

Main article: Women in the workforce

The 1870 US Census was the first to count “Females engaged in each and every occupation” and provides an intriguing snapshot of women's history. It reveals that, contrary to popular belief, not all American women of the Victorian period were either idle in their middle class homes or working in sweatshops. Women were 15% of the total work force (1.8 million out of 12.5). They made up one-third of factory “operatives,” to be sure, but teaching and the more gentle occupations of dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring played a larger role. Two-thirds of teachers were women. And they could be found in such unexpected places as iron and steel works (495), mines (46), sawmills (35), oil wells and refineries (40), gas works (4), and charcoal kilns (5), and held such surprising jobs as ship rigger (16), teamster (196), turpentine laborer (185), brass founder/worker (102), shingle and lathe maker (84), stock-herder (45), gun and locksmith (33), hunter and trapper (2). There were five lawyers, 24 dentists, and 2,000 doctors.

Sex and reproduction

In the history of sex, the social construction of sexual behavior - its taboos, regulation and social and political impact - has had a profound effect on women in the world since prehistoric times. The history of abortion dates back to ancient times and has impacted men and women in a variety of ways in different times and places. Historically, it is unclear how often the ethics of abortion (induced abortion) was discussed. In the later half of the 20th century some nations began to legalize abortion. This controversial subject has sparked heated debate and in some cases even violence.

Women have been exposed to various tortuous sexual conditions and have been discriminated against in various fashions in history. An example are the comfort women, women who were forced to work as prostitutes in military brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II.

Clothing

The social aspects of clothing has been related to the traditions regarding certain items of clothing intrinsically suited different gender roles. In particular, the wearing of skirts and trousers has given rise to common phrases expressing implied restrictions in use and disapproval of offending behaviour. For example, ancient Greeks often considered the wearing of trousers by Persian men as a sign of an effeminate attitude. Women's clothing in Victorian fashion was used as a means of control and admiration. Reactions to the elaborate confections of French fashion led to various calls for reform on the grounds of both beauty (Artistic and Aesthetic dress) and health (dress reform; especially for undergarments and lingerie). Although trousers for women did not become fashion items until the later 20th century, women began wearing men's trousers (suitably altered) for outdoor work a hundred years earlier. In the 1960s, André Courrèges introduced long trousers for women as a fashion item, leading to the era of the pantsuit and designer jeans and the gradual eroding of the prohibitions against girls and women wearing trousers in schools, the workplace, and fine restaurants. Corsets also have long been used for fashion, and body modification, such as waistline reduction. There were, and are, many different styles and types of corsets, varying depending on the intended use, corset maker's style, and the fashions of the era.

Status

Beauties Wearing Flowers, by Tang Dynasty Chinese artist Zhou Fang, 8th century.

The status of Women in the Victoria Era is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the nation's power and richness and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. Victorian morality was full of many contradictions. A plethora of social movements concerned with improving public morals co-existed with a class system that permitted harsh living conditions for many, such as women. There is an apparent contradiction between the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint and the prevalence of social phenomena that included prostitution. In the Victorian era, the bathing machine was developed. It was a device that flourished in the 19th century to allow people to wade in the ocean at beaches without violating Victorian notions of modesty. The bathing machine was part of sea-bathing etiquette that was more rigorously enforced upon women than men.

Religion

See also: Women as theological figures

The Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Islamic and Christian views about women vary considerably today and have varied even more throughout the last two millennia, evolving along with or counter to the societies in which people have lived. For much of history, the role of women in the life of the church both local and universal has been downplayed, overlooked, or simply denied. When some women have interreligious marriage, or marriage (either religious or civil) between partners professing different religions, they seldom can do so without disobeying both of these religions.

Further reading

World

• Clay, Catherine, Christine Senecal, and Chandrika Paul, eds. Envisioning Women in World History: Prehistory to 1500 (2008)
  • McVay, Pamela. Envisioning Women in World History: 1500-Present (2008)
• Helgren, Jennifer, and Colleen A. Vasconcellos, eds. Girlhood: A Global History (Rutgers University Press; 2010) 422 pages; interdisciplinary essays on girlhood on six continents since 1750.

Primary sources

• Hughes, by Sarah S., and Brady Hughes, eds. Women in World History: Readings from Prehistory to 1500 (1995)
• Hughes, by Sarah S., and Brady Hughes, eds. Women in World History: Readings from 1500 to the Present (1997)

Ancient

• Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women's History and Ancient History (1991) online edition

Asia

China

• Ebrey, Patricia. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (1990)
• Hershatter, Gail, and Wang Zheng. "Chinese History: A Useful Category of Gender Analysis," American Historical Review, Dec 2008, Vol. 113 Issue 5, pp 1404-1421
• Hershatter, Gail. Women in China's Long Twentieth Century (2007), full text online
• Hershatter, Gail, Emily Honig, Susan Mann, and Lisa Rofel, eds. Guide to Women's Studies in China (1998)
• Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in China, 1573-1722 (1994)
• Mann, Susan. Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (1997)
• Wang, Shuo. "The 'New Social History' in China: The Development of Women's History," History Teacher, May 2006, Vol. 39 Issue 3, pp 315-323

Europe

• Boxer, Marilyn J. Boxer, Jean H. Quataert, and Joan W. Scott, eds. ''Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present (2000), essays by scholars excerpt and text search
• Bridenthal, Renate, Susan Stuard, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks eds. Becoming Visible: Women in European History (2nd ed. 1997), essays by scholars
• Ewan, Elizabeth. "A New Trumpet? The History of Women in Scotland 1300-1700," History Compass, March 2009, Vol. 7 Issue 2, pp 431-446
• Fairchilds, Cissie. Women in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (2007) excerpt and text search
• Fout, John C. German Women in the Nineteenth Century: A Social History (1984) online edition
• Smith, Bonnie. Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (1988)
• Stearns, Peter, ed. Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000 (6 vol 2000), 209 essays by leading scholars in 3000 pp.; many aspects of women's history covered
• Tilly, Louise A. and Joan W. Scott. Women, Work, and Family (1978)
• Ward, Jennifer. Women in Medieval Europe: 1200-1500 (2003)
• Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (2008) excerpt and text search

Primary sources: Europe

• DiCaprio, Lisa, and Merry E. Wiesner, eds. Lives and Voices: Sources in European Women's History (2000) excerpt and text search
• Hughes, Sarah S., and Brady Hughes, eds. Women in World History: Readings from Prehistory to 1500 (1995), 270pp primary sources.
  • Hughes, Sarah S., and Brady Hughes, eds. Women in World History: Readings from 1500 to the Present (1997) 296pp; primary sources

Canada

• Cook, Sharon Anne; McLean, Lorna; and O'Rourke, Kate, eds. Framing Our Past: Canadian Women's History in the Twentieth Century. (2001). 498 pp.
• Strong-Boag, Veronica and Fellman, Anita Clair, eds. Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women's History. (3d ed. 1997). 498 pp.
• Prentice, Alison and Trofimenkoff, Susan Mann, eds. The Neglected Majority: Essays in Canadian Women's History (2 vol 1985)

United States

Surveys

• Banner, Lois. Women in modern America: a brief history. San Diego 1984
• Daniel, Robert L. American women in the twentieth century San Diego 1987
• Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (1980).
• Diner, Hasia, ed. Encyclopedia of American Women's History (2010)
• Hewitt, Nancy A. A Companion to American Women's History (2005) excerpt and text search
• Kerber, Linda K.; Kessler-Harris, Alice; and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, eds. U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays. (1995). 477 pp. online edition
• Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (2003) excerpt and text search
• Melosh, Barbara. Gender and American History since 1890 (1993) online edition
• Miller, Page Putnam, ed. Reclaiming the Past: Landmarks of Women's History. (1992). 232 pp.
• Pleck, Elizabeth H. and Nancy F. Cott, eds. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of American Women (2008), essays by scholars excerpt and text search
• Riley, Glenda. Inventing the American Woman: An Inclusive History (2001) vol 2 online edition
• Woloch, Nancy. Women and The American Experience, A Concise History (2001)
• Zophy, Angela Howard, ed. Handbook of American Women's History. (2nd ed. 2000). 763 pp. articles by experts

Specific studies

• Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996)
• Campbell, D'Ann. Women at War with America: Private Lives in a Public Era, (1984), World War II; covers housewives, nurses, Wacs, war-workers
• Mintz, Steven, and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (1988), 316pp; the standard scholarly history excerpt and text search

Primary sources: U.S.

• Berkin, Carol and Horowitz, Leslie, eds. Women's Voices, Women's Lives: Documents in Early American History. (1998). 203 pp.
• DuBois, Ellen Carol and Ruiz, Vicki L., eds. Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S. Women's History. (1994). 620 pp.

Historiography

• Frederickson, Mary E. "Going Global: New Trajectories in U.S. Women's History," History Teacher, Feb 2010, Vol. 43 Issue 2, p169-189
• Hershatter, Gail, and Wang Zheng. "Chinese History: A Useful Category of Gender Analysis," American Historical Review, Dec 2008, Vol. 113 Issue 5, pp 1404-1421
• Meade, Teresa A., and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, eds. A Companion to Gender History (2006) excerpt and text search
• Offen, Karen; Pierson, Ruth Roach; and Rendall, Jane, eds. Writing Women's History: International Perspectives (1991). 552 pp.
• Petö, Andrea, and Judith Szapor, "The State of Women's and Gender History in Eastern Europe: The Case of Hungary," Journal of Women's History, Spring 2007, Vol. 19 Issue 1, pp 160-166
• Scott, Joan Wallach. Gender and the Politics of History (1999), influential essays excerpt and text search
• Spongberg, Mary. Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance. (2003) 308 pages; on Europe
• Thébaud, Françoise. "Writing Women's and Gender History in France: A National Narrative?" Journal of Women's History, Spring 2007, Vol. 19 Issue 1, pp 167-172.

See also

The following is a list of issues in Wikipedia either about women's history, or containing relevant information, often in a "History" section.

Lists

• List of women's organizations
• List of current and historical women's universities and colleges

  A women's college is an institution of higher education where enrollment is all-female. Where institutions have become coeducational, this is noted, along with the year the enrollment policy was changed.

• List of feminists
• List of 20th century women artists

• Women's History Month

  March is a month to celebrate the Women's history and International Women's Day.

General

• Family history
• Gender history
• History of feminism

Political and legal

• Equal Rights Amendment

  A proposed amendment to the United States Constitution which would have guaranteed equal rights under law for Americans regardless of gender.

• Women's suffrage.
• Suffragette

  Suffragettes are members of the women's suffrage movement in the Britain. Suffragist is a more general term for members of the movement, whether radical or conservative. American women preferred "suffragist" because of the violent connotations of the British "suffragette".

• A History of Woman Suffrage

  A history book of the suffrage movement, primarily in the United States, composed of six volumes from 1887 to 1922.

• Men's League for Women's Suffrage
• Woman's Christian Temperance Union

  The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is the oldest continuing non-sectarian women's organization in the US and worldwide.

• The Subjection of Women

  This is the title of an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1869, stating his views in favor of a much wider selection of people being allowed to vote.

Sexuality

• Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures

  It concerns the culture, knowledge, and references shared by various people by virtue of their membership in a minorities or their state of being transgendered.

• Effeminacy

  Effeminacy is character trait of a male showing femininity, unmanliness, womanliness, weakness, softness and/or a delicacy, which contradicts traditional masculine, male gender roles.

Research

• Schlesinger Library
• The Women's Library (London)
• GENESIS

  Guide to sources for women's history in the British Isles

Other

• Demography

  Demography is the study of human population dynamics. It encompasses the study of the size, structure and distribution of populations, and how populations change over time due to births, deaths, migration and aging.

• Herstory
• History of feminism
• Women in Family history

External links

• The Gerritsen Collection - Women's History Online
• Feminist Majority Foundation timeline
• Genesis: a mapping initiative to identify and develop access to women's history sources in the British Isles
• Places Where Women Made History, a National Park Service Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary
• Women in World History