Women's history

Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history and the methods required to do so. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights throughout recorded history, the examination of individual and groups of women of historical significance, and the effect that historical events have had on women. Inherent in the study of women'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, women'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 United States and Britain, where second-wave feminist historians, influenced by the new approaches promoted by social history, led the way. As activists in women's liberation, discussing and analyzing the oppression and inequalities they experienced as women, they believed it imperative to learn 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 are usually excluded and, when mentioned, are usually portrayed in sex-stereotypical roles such as wives, mothers, daughters and mistresses. History is value-laden in regard to what is considered historically "worthy".[1]

Regions

Europe

Changes came in the 19th and 20th centuries; for example, for women the right to equal pay is now enshrined in law. Women traditionally ran the household, bore and reared the children, were nurses, mothers, wives, neighbors, friends, and teachers. During periods of war, women were drafted into the labor market to undertake work that had been traditionally restricted to men. Following the wars, they invariably lost their jobs in industry and had to return to domestic and service roles.

The history of Scottish women in the late 19th-century and early 20th-century was not fully developed as a field of study until the 1980s. In addition, most work on women before 1700 has been published since 1980. 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.

Interest in the study of women's history in Eastern Europe has been delayed.[2] 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 20th century. 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.[3]

France

Further information: Women in the French Revolution

French historians have taken a unique approach: there has been extensive scholarship in women's and gender history despite the lack of women's and gender study programs or departments at the university level. But approaches used by other academics in the research of broadly based social histories has been applied to the field of women's history as well. The high level of research and publication in women's and gender history is due to the high interest within French society. The structural discrimination in academia against the subject of gender history in France is changing due to the increase in international studies following the formation of the European Union, and more French scholars seeking appointments outside Europe.[4]

Pre-revolution

In the Ancien Régime in France, few women held any formal power; some queens did, as did the heads of Catholic convents. In the Enlightenment, the writings of philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau provided a 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.[5]

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 ensure 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 were given gender-specific 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 was presented for female education. Only through education at home were knowledgeable women formed, usually to the sole end of dazzling their salons.[6]

Germany

Before the 19th century, young women lived under the economic and disciplinary authority of their fathers until they married and passed under the control of their husbands. In order to secure a satisfactory marriage, a woman needed to bring a substantial dowry. In the wealthier families, daughters received their dowry from their families, whereas the poorer women needed to work in order to save their wages so as to improve their chances to wed. Under the German laws, women had property rights over their dowries and inheritances, a valuable benefit as high mortality rates resulted in successive marriages. Before 1789, the majority of women lived confined to society’s private sphere, the home.

The Age of Reason did not bring much more for women: men, including Enlightenment aficionados, believed that women were naturally destined to be principally wives and mothers. Within the educated classes, there was the belief that women needed to be sufficiently educated to be intelligent and agreeable interlocutors to their husbands. However, the lower-class women were expected to be economically productive in order to help their husbands make ends meet.[7]

In the newly founded German State (1871), women of all social classes were politically and socially disenfranchised. The code of social respectability confined upper class and bourgeois women to their homes. They were considered socially and economically inferior to their husbands. The unmarried women were ridiculed, and the ones who wanted to avoid social descent could work as unpaid housekeepers living with relatives; the most able could work as governesses or they could become nuns.

A significant number of middle-class families became impoverished between 1871 and 1890 as the pace of industrial growth was uncertain, and women had to earn money in secret by sewing or embroidery to contribute to the family income.[7] In 1865, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Frauenverein (ADF) was founded as an umbrella organization for women's associations, demanding rights to education, employment and political participation. Three decades later, the Bund Deutscher Frauenverbände (BDF) replaced ADF and excluded from membership the proletarian movement that was part of the earlier group. The two movements had differing views concerning women's place in society, and accordingly, they also had different agendas. The bourgeois movement made important contributions to the access of women to education and employment (mainly office-based and teaching). The proletarian movement, on the other hand, developed as a branch of the Social Democratic Party. As factory jobs became available for women, they campaigned for equal pay and equal treatment. In 1908 German women won the right to join political parties, and in 1918 they were finally granted the right to vote. The emancipation of women in Germany was to be challenged in following years.[8]

Historians have paid special attention to the efforts by Nazi Germany to reverse the political and social gains that women made before 1933, especially in the relatively liberal Weimar Republic.[9] The role of women in Nazi Germany changed according to circumstances. Theoretically the Nazis believed that women must be subservient to men, avoid careers, devote themselves to childbearing and child-rearing, and be helpmates to the traditional dominant fathers in the traditional family.[10] But, before 1933, women played important roles in the Nazi organization and were allowed some autonomy to mobilize other women. After Hitler came to power in 1933, the activist women were replaced by bureaucratic women, who emphasized feminine virtues, marriage, and childbirth.

As Germany prepared for war, large numbers of women were incorporated into the public sector and, with the need for full mobilization of factories by 1943, all women were required to register with the employment office. Hundreds of thousands of women served in the military as nurses and support personnel, and another hundred thousand served in the Luftwaffe, especially helping to operate the anti—aircraft systems.[11] Women's wages remained unequal and women were denied positions of leadership or control.[12]

More than two million women were murdered in the Holocaust. The Nazi ideology viewed women generally as agents of fertility. Accordingly, it identified the Jewish woman as an element to be exterminated to prevent the rise of future generations. For these reasons, the Nazis treated women as prime targets for annihilation in the Holocaust.[13]

Russia

Main article: Feminism in Russia

Women's history in Russia started to become important in the Czarist era, and concern was shown in the consciousness and writing of Alexander Pushkin. During the Soviet Era, feminism was developed along with ideals of equality, but in practice and in domestic arrangements, men often dominate.

Asia

China

Published work generally deals with women as visible participants in revolution, employment as vehicles for women's liberation, Confucianism and the cultural concept of family as sources of women's oppression. While rural marriage rituals, such as bride price and dowry, have remained the same in form, their function has changed. This reflects the decline of the extended family and the growth in women's agency in the marriage transaction.[14] In recent scholarship in China, the concept of gender has yielded a bounty of new knowledge in English- and Chinese-language writings.[15]

Ladies of a Mandarin's Family at Cards, Thomas Allom; G. N. Wright (1843). China, in a Series of Views, Displaying the Scenery, Architecture, and Social Habits of That Ancient Empire. Volume 3. p. 18

Zhongguo fu nü sheng huo shi (simplified Chinese: 中国妇女生活史; traditional Chinese: 中國婦女生活史; pinyin: Zhōngguó Fùnǚ Shēnghuó Shǐ; literally: "Chinese Women's Life History") is a historical book written by Chen Dongyuan in 1928 and published by The Commercial Press in 1937. The book, deemed as the first to give a systematic introduction to women's history in China, has strongly influenced further research in this field.[16]

The book sheds a light on Chinese women's life ranging from ancient times (prior to Zhou Dynasty) to the Republic of China. In the book, sections are separated based on dynasties in China. Sections are divided into segments to introduce different themes, such as marriage, feudal ethical codes, education for women, virtues, positions, concept of chastity, foot-binding and women’s rights movement in modern China. Inspired by the anti-traditional thoughts in New Culture Movement, the author devoted much effort to disclosing and denouncing the unfairness and suppression in culture, institutions and life that victimize women in China. According to the book, women’s conditions are slightly improved until modern China. in the Preface of the book, the author writes: since women in China are always subject to abuse, the history of women is, naturally the history of abuse of women in China. The author revealed the motivation: the book intends to explain how the principle of women being inferior to men evolves; how the abuse to women is intensified over time; and how the misery on women’s back experience the history change. The author wants to promote women’s liberation by revealing the political and social suppression of women.

Mann (2009) explores how Chinese biographers have depicted women over two millennia (221 BCE to 1911), especially during the Han dynasty. Zhang Xuecheng, Sima Qian, and Zhang Huiyan and other writers often study women of the governing class, and their representation in domestic scenes of death in the narratives and in the role of martyrs.[17]

Tibet

The historiography of women in the history of Tibet confronts the suppression of women's histories in the social narratives of an exiled community. McGranahan (2010) examines the role of women in the 20th century, especially during the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet. She studies women in the Tibetan resistance army, the subordination of women in a Buddhist society, and the persistent concept of menstrual blood as a contaminating agent.[18] 1998

Japan

Japanese girl playing on gekin, Baron Raimund von Stillfried und Rathenitz (1839-1911)

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. The social and political climate of the 1980s in particular, favorable in many ways to women, gave opportunities for Japanese women's historiography 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 restricted by traditional historical methods and expectations. The study of Japanese women's history has become accepted as part of the traditional topics.[19]

Africa

South Africa

South Africa, breaking the cycle of violence

Prior to the end of apartheid, the study of women's history was generally neglected. Most history studied was centered on European Africans, rather than the indigenous peoples.

South Africa has been dealing with severe social issues due to the legacy of apartheid, rising unemployment, and the increasing gap between rich and poor. These conditions have fueled violence against women and girls, drug abuse and gang culture in South Africa. Around one in three registered sexual offences in the country are against children. Protecting children, especially orphans and those affected by HIV and AIDS, is critical for breaking the cycle of violence.

In March 2013 the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women have met to discuss how to prevent all forms of violence against women and girls. This International Women's Day helped demand action by sending a message to global leaders to put a stop to this worldwide injustice.

The United Kingdom aid is working in 21 countries to address physical and sexual violence against women and girls. It will be supporting 10 million women and girls with improved access to security and justice services by 2015.[20]

Americas

United States

The serious studies of women written by amateur women scholars were ignored by the male-dominated history profession until the 1960s, when the first breakthroughs came.[21] Most scholars attribute Gerda Lerner to having offered in 1963 the first regular college course in women's history. The field of women's history exploded dramatically after 1970, along with the growth of the new social history and the acceptance of women into graduate programs in history departments. An important development is to integrate women into the history of race and slavery. A pioneer effort was Deborah Gray White's 'Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985), which helped to open up analysis of race, slavery, abolitionism and feminism, as well as resistance, power, and activism, and themes of violence, sexualities, and the body.[22] A major trend in recent years has been to emphasize a global perspective.[23]

Canada

Themes

Rights and equality

Main article: Women's rights

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 to the status of women, but the history of feminism reaches to before the 18th century. (See protofeminism.) 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 Britain, the Feminism movement began in the 19th century and continues in the present day. Simone de Beauvoir wrote a detailed analysis of women's oppression in her 1949 treatise The Second Sex. It became a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.[24] 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. One trigger for the revolution was the development of the birth control pill in 1960, which gave women access to easy and reliable contraception in order to conduct family planning.

Employment

The 1870 US Census was the first to count "Females engaged in each and every occupation" and provides a snapshot of women's history. It reveals that, contrary to popular myth, not all American women of the Victorian period were "safe" in their middle-class homes or working in sweatshops. Women composed 15% of the total work force (1.8 million out of 12.5). They made up one-third of factory "operatives," and were concentrated in teaching, as the nation emphasized expanding education; dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring. Two-thirds of teachers were women. They also worked in 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 effects - has had a profound effect on women in the world since prehistoric times. Absent assured ways of controlling reproduction, women have practiced abortion since ancient times; many societies have also practice infanticide to ensure the survival of older children. Historically, it is unclear how often the ethics of abortion (induced abortion) was discussed in societies. 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 violence, as different parts of society have differing social and religious ideas about its meaning.

Women have been exposed to various tortuous sexual conditions and have been discriminated against in various fashions in history. In addition to women being sexual victims of troops i warfare, an institutionalized example was the Japanese military impressing prisoners of war as comfort women, women who were forced to work as prostitutes in military brothels in Japanese-occupied countries during World War II.

Clothing

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

The social aspects of clothing have revolved around traditions regarding certain items of clothing intrinsically suited different gender roles. In different periods, both women's and men's fashions have highlighted one area or another of the body for attention. 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 fashionable 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 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

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 consider its appalling social conditions. Victorian morality was full of contradictions. A plethora of social movements concerned with improving public morals co-existed with a class system that permitted and imposed harsh living conditions for many, such as women. In this period, an outward appearance of dignity and restraint was valued, but the usual "vices" continued, such as prostitution. In the Victorian era, the bathing machine was developed and flourished. It was a device to allow people to wade in the ocean at beaches without violating Victorian notions of modesty about having "limbs" revealed. The bathing machine was part of sea-bathing etiquette that was more rigorously enforced upon women than men.

Religion

The Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Islamic and Christian views about women vary considerably today. They have varied 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.[25] When some women have interreligious marriage, or marriage (either religious or civil) between partners professing different religions, they can do so without disobeying both of these religions.

Warfare

Warfare always engaged women as victims and objects of protection.[26][27] During the twentieth century civilian women on the home front became increasingly important in supporting total warfare, as housewives, munitions workers, replacements for men in service, nurses, and combat soldiers.[28]

See also

The following is a list of articles in Wikipedia (and outside links where Wikipedia has no relevant articles) which are either about women's history, or containing relevant information, often in a "History" section.

Days and month of recognition
Lists
Timelines
General
Political and legal
Sexuality
Research
Other

References

  1. ↑ June Purvis, "Women's History Today," History Today, Nov 2004, Vol. 54 Issue 11, pp 40-42
  2. ↑ Maria Bucor, "An Archipelago of Stories: Gender History in Eastern Europe," American Historical Review, Dec 2008, Vol. 113 Issue 5, pp 1375-1389
  3. ↑ Andrea Petö 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
  4. ↑ Françoise Thébaud, "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.
  5. ↑ Jennifer J. Popiel, "Making Mothers: The Advice Genre and the Domestic Ideal, 1760-1830", Journal of Family History 2004 29(4): 339-350
  6. ↑ Carolyn C. Lougee, "'Noblesse,' Domesticity, and Social Reform: The Education of Girls by Fenelon and Saint-Cyr", History of Education Quarterly 1974 14(1): 87-113
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 William W. Hagen, German History in Modern Times (2012)
  8. ↑ Eva Kolinsky and Wilfried van der Will, The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture (1998)
  9. ↑ Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion Kaplan, When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (1984)
  10. ↑ Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany (2001)
  11. ↑ Campbell, D'Ann. "Women in Combat: The World War Two Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union" (PDF). Journal of Military History (April 1993), 57:301-323. (online edition)
  12. ↑ Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (1988)
  13. ↑ "Spots of Light: Women in the Holocaust". online exhibition, Yad Vashem.
  14. ↑ Gail Hershatter, Women in China's Long Twentieth Century (2007)
  15. ↑ Gail Hershatter, and Zheng Wang, "Chinese History: A Useful Category of Gender Analysis," American Historical Review, Dec 2008, Vol. 113 Issue 5, pp 1404-1421
  16. ↑ zh:中國婦女生活史
  17. ↑ Susan Mann, "Scene-Setting: Writing Biography in Chinese History," American Historical Review, June 2009, Vol. 114 Issue 3, pp 631-639
  18. ↑ Carole McGranahan, "Narrative Dispossession: Tibet and the Gendered Logics of Historical Possibility," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Oct 2010, Vol. 52 Issue 4, pp 768-797
  19. ↑ Hiroko Tomida, "The Evolution Of Japanese Women's Historiography," Japan Forum, July 1996, Vol. 8 Issue 2, pp 189-203
  20. ↑ , UK Department of International Development
  21. ↑ Bonnie G. Smith, "Women's History: A Retrospective from the United States," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, Spring 2010, Vol. 35 Issue 3, pp 723-747,
  22. ↑ Jessica Millward, "More History Than Myth: African American Women's History Since the Publication of 'Ar'n't I a Woman?'" Journal of Women's History, Summer 2007, Vol. 19 Issue 2, pp 161-167
  23. ↑ Mary E. Frederickson, "Going Global: New Trajectories in U.S. Women's History," History Teacher, Feb 2010, Vol. 43 Issue 2, pp 169-189
  24. ↑ Mary Lowenthal Felstiner, "Seeing 'The Second Sex' Through the Second Wave," Feminist Studies (1980) 6#2 pp 247-276
  25. ↑ Blevins, Carolyn DeArmond, Women in Christian History: A Bibliography. Macon, Georgia: Mercer Univ Press, 1995. ISBN 0-86554-493-X
  26. ↑ Jean Bethe Elshtain, Women and War (1995)
  27. ↑ Jean Bethe Elshtain and Sheila Tobias, eds., Women, Militarism, and War (1990)
  28. ↑ Bernard Cook, ed, Women and War: Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present (2 vol, 2006)

Further reading

World

Primary sources

Ancient

Asia

China

Europe

Primary sources: Europe

Canada

United States

Surveys

Specific studies

Primary sources: U.S.

Historiography

External links

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