Women in World History

Index

From: Merry Wiesner-Hanks

From: Merry Wiesner-Hanks merrywh@uwm.edu Professor of History University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the teaching forum on women in world history! It doesn't seem as if it should be difficult to incorporate women into world history-they are at least, and often slightly more than, half of the population of every culture. Many of the themes that are central in world history scholarship and teaching-contacts among societies, encounters between groups, migration, cultural diffusion and blending-involve women as well as men. Materials are increasingly available; women's history has been around as a field in its most recent form for about thirty years, with hundreds of books and articles on women from all periods and many societies. The innovative set of curricular materials on "Women in World Area Studies" developed by Margery Wall Bingham and Susan Hill Gross, is now nearly thirty years old. Ever more primary sources by and about women are edited,translated, published, and presented on web-sites.

Many of the first works in women's history fit women into existing historical categories-nations, historical periods, social classes, religious allegiance-but over the last three decades this approach, sarcastically labeled "add women and stir," has become more unsatisfying. Focusing on women often disrupted the familiar categories, forcing us to rethink the way that history was organized and structured. The European Renaissance and Enlightenment lost some of their luster once women were included, as did the democracy of ancient Athens or Jacksonian America. This disruption of well-known categories and paradigms ultimately included the topic that had long been considered the proper focus of all history - man. Viewing the male experience as universal had not only hidden women's history, but it had also prevented analyzing men's experiences as those of men.

Those of us familiar with studying women increasingly began to discuss the ways in which systems of sexual differentiation affected both women and men, and by the early 1980s to use the word "gender" to describe these systems. "Sex" was defined as a group of physical, morphological, and anatomical differences (what are often called "biological differences"), while gender was culturally constructed and historically changing, so very open to historical investigation. Since the 1980s the distinctions between the two have become contested and muddied, as anthropologists, psychologists,biological scientists, and historians have demonstrated that "social" gender and "biological" sex are very interrelated, and as "gender" has increasingly become a standard shorthand for "sex" even on drivers' license forms. Even though there are sharp disagreements about gender, however, gender history has developed as a field related to women's history, though the exact relationship between the two is just as contested as is the definition of gender.

In what is the normal pattern for a new area of historical investigation, textbooks followed the development of both women's and gender history with a slight time lag. Textbooks in all areas of history now usually include discussions of individual women, women's involvement in movements for social and political change, and the impact of various developments on women's lives. Those discussions have moved out of the boxes in which they first appeared, and are now better integrated into the general narrative. (If the textbook you use still has women in boxes, push for a better textbook.) There is also an increasing amount of material available on gender, as well as women, especially in world history textbooks, which are usually newer in their conceptualization and more recent in their first edition than those in Western Civ or U.S. history. World history textbooks are much more likely than Western Civilization or European history textbooks to have an index entry on "gender"-usually described as "gender roles," "gender relations," or "gender differences"-as well as one for women, and to use the word gender in the text.

Looking at textbooks more closely, however, certain patterns emerge. Gender roles and relations are discussed almost always within a few specific contexts, usually prehistory, early China, classical Greece, Islamic society, the European Renaissance, industrialization, and World War II. There is often no discussion of women or gender in the coverage of South America after the era of the Spanish conquest (except for Eva Peron), and only a little about sub-Saharan Africa. Sections described as "gender roles" in the index are often only about women, with men's experience as the unmarked norm. Books with very good discussions of Murasaki Shikibu in Heian Japan, for example, always label her a "woman writer" and mention the way in which her work was shaped by the fact that she was a woman. In contrast, I have never seen Confucius labeled a "man philosopher" or even a "male philosopher," though we can easily imagine what the impact of his ideas would have been had he not been a man. Thus books with extensive coverage of women still reinforce the idea that there are artists and women artists, rulers and women rulers, peasants and women peasants. Women, then, seem to have more gender, in the same way that African-Americans have more race (and, as many people have commented, men have more class).

What does this mean for teaching world history? The daunting task of trying to cover a huge amount of material can certainly lead us to think about women's history as either a burden or a luxury. Either "you mean I have to get through all this stuff, and something on women, TOO?" or "if I get through all this stuff, then I'll do a very innovative unit or exercise on women, as a reward for my students after all those conquests." Coverage is a problem we face on many issues, of course--one prominent world historian has said that conceptualizing world history is essentially thinking about what to omit-and it will remain as we integrate women into world history.

One thread of this conversation will no doubt be suggestions from all of us about how to address this. Are there particular materials that you have found especially helpful in integrating women's history, or that allow students to see a range of issues with a relatively small set of materials? Are there areas in which including women allows students to see certain things more clearly, or analyze issues in a more sophisticated way? Are there materials that allow especially interesting comparisons between or within cultures? (I'm especially eager to hear about things that give students the opportunity to see differences among women as well as differences between women and men, so that they can go beyond statements like "the role of women in China was.") Conversely, are there materials or issues that have not worked? How have you balanced women's actions and limitations on women? (My students often complain that women's history is so depressing, but I have not figured out how to make certain things more upbeat.)

Coverage is a constant concern in world history, made even more daunting as we take time to develop our students' analytical skills and understanding of historical methods. As some of you may know, for more than fifteen years I've been part of author teams developing a series of source readers that include longer discussions of methodology and suggestions for ways to analyze source materials. (Discovering the Western Past, Discovering the Global Past, etc., published by Houghton-Mifflin.) Thus I've had lots of practice in this, but it still takes me a long time to think through exactly what skills I want students to develop, and what sources will best help them do this. If we want them to begin to think of gender as a "category of analysis," what materials or strategies can we use? Are there comparative cases that work especially well to sharpen their analytical skills? Are there limits to this "lens of gender"? (There clearly are among professional historians. Despite the thirty years of women's history, some historians still think of this as a passing fad. I have just returned from the first ever world and global history conference held in Europe, hosted by the University of Leipzig. In both the opening and closing sessions the word gender or women was never mentioned, nor was there a single woman on these panels. There was one panel-out of about forty-on women, the equivalent at a conference of the box in a textbook, and the women who presented were deeply angry. The conference was exclusionary along other lines as well, which I think were not unrelated to the narrowness on gender issues.)

As we think about issues of coverage and methods (which is sometimes conceptualized as coverage VS. methods), we may also want to discuss ways of handling personal and political issues that emerge in the classroom. I teach only the first half of the world history survey, and my students have very little personal stake in most of the things we discuss; few of them are crushed to learn about the end of the Roman Empire or pleased about the prominence of Malay traders in the Indian Ocean. This is also true for most issues involving women. They don't get angry, as I did, when they learn about life for citizen women in ancient Athens, primarily because they never learned that Athenian democracy or the ideas of Aristotle and Plato were so great in the first place.

When we cover gender issues in world religions, however, this can be very different. In this forum, we may wish to discuss strategies for approaching issues on which, as the old slogan goes, the personal is political. How have you approached issues that might be especially sensitive for some of your students (or their parents), particularly given the culturally diverse classrooms that many of us teach in? How have you handled topics that may be inflammatory, or that various groups may pressure you to leave out or approach only in a certain way? (This may be more of an issue for those of you who are secondary school teachers, but I've had a parent call me about why I thought it was appropriate for their college student son to read about ideas about the body and reproduction in classical China and Greece.) How have you handled issues on which students may bring personal experiences to class? (This is a situation that often faces people teaching Women's Studies classes of all types, but it also emerges when discussing gender issues in history classes.)

I am pleased that you have decided to join this conversation on what are challenging issues for all of us, and look forward to our discussion.