Outline Pioneers SecondWave Feminism Separate Spheres Gender History The Colonial Context Sources Status Pioneers Mainly feminist scholars On margins of academia Focused on women amp work ID: 344263
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Slide1
Studying Women’s & Gender HistorySlide2
Outline
Pioneers
Early Work
Second-Wave Feminism
Revisions
Separate
Spheres
Gender
History
Recent Developments
The
Colonial
Context
Queer History
Sources
ConclusionSlide3
Pioneers
Mainly feminist
scholars
On margins
of academia
Focused on women & work
Used social
and economic
historical methods rather than political
, diplomatic, intellectual history
.
Importance of LSESlide4
Olive Schreiner 1855-1920
http://www.oliveschreinerletters.ed.ac.uk/Slide5
LSE Students c. 1910 – LSE
Flickr
collectionSlide6
Alice Clark 1874-1934
Pessimistic view of impact of industrialisation
Talks of ‘Golden Age’ of Women’s Labour in 17
th
CenturySlide7
Ivy Pinchbeck 1898-1982
Detailed consideration of impact of industrialisation on women
Ultimately supports positive view that women (especially single women) were liberated by capitalismSlide8
Second Wave Feminism
Revival
of feminist activism
in 60s
Women
began meeting together to raise consciousness
Mantra
was ‘the personal is political’,
presented
most powerfully by Kate Millett in her book
Sexual Politics
published in 1970.
Transformed
women’s history from a minority strand of ‘mainstream’ history to a major intellectual movement.Slide9
Sheila Rowbotham
,
Hidden from HistorySlide10
Separate Spheres
Davidoff & Hall
Family Fortunes
Demonstrated impact
of changing gender roles on
formation
of
distinct
middle-class identity
Acknowledged rhetoric
of ‘separate spheres’ in establishing boundaries between the public and private worlds
Public
life
exclusively
male domain
Domestic
setting
where
women’s moral virtues
could be
developed.
Ideals originally
expressed
by
a small group of
EvangelicalsSlide11
Gender History
Joan
Scott
Gender
and the Politics of
History
Primary
role of language in the construction of gendered
identity
Gender
should
be
used as an analytical category for historical investigation
Explore cultural
meanings of masculinity and
femininity Part of wider
debate
about contribution
of postmodernism and its concentration on the construction of meaning through
languageSlide12
Masculinity
Reconsideration
as men’s role as historical
actors
In
late 1970s
‘
men’s movement’ questioned modern patriarchal gender
roles
Seidler
: ‘
if we live in a man’s world it is not a world that has been built upon the needs and nourishment of men. Rather it is a social world of power and subordination in which men have been forced to compete if we want to benefit from our inherited masculinity’
Argued
that subordinate forms of masculinity are subject to greater repression than the repression of women by
men
Does the rise of gender history write women out of the story?Slide13
Postcolonialism
Rose
out of
broader
social history tradition
via
feminist and nationalist critiques of the primacy of class as a
category
Feminist
scholars of the developing world have attacked western feminists for refusing to explore the different meanings that being a woman may have in various class, racial, ethnic or religious contexts
Explore complex
and contradictory relationships between gender, imperialism, and
politicsSlide14
Queer Theory/History
Queer theory/history emerges in
the 1970s but more sophisticated work
appears since 2000
Queer
theory argues that sexuality is an unstable category which is shaped by social and cultural factors.
Victorians
were no more repressed than those who became before or after – merely that discourses change.
Have
challenged many
established views
of Victorian culture and
societySlide15
Sources
Reconsideration of traditional sources (court records, parliamentary papers, newspapers)
Use of new sources
eg
oral history (Elizabeth Roberts,
A Woman’s Place)
http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/workinglivesSlide16
Conclusion
Who can write women’s history?
Does it have status in the academy?
Do men adopt a misogynistic tone?
Eg
‘
Bitch power’
Are more sympathetic men “gender-traitors”?