Comment on Tilly: Who Asks the Questions for Women’s History?

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith M. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Historical Explanation ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Women’S History

In her complex and subtle paper, Louise Tilly raises a host of intriguing, debatable issues. She tells us, pace Joan Scott, that women’s history has “arrived” in terms of both institotionaliza-tion within the academy and development into a separate historical specialty. She tells us that we must strive towards a women’s history that is not only descriptive (seeing the task “of retrieving women’s lives and achievements ... as sufficient unto themselves”) but also analytical (“connecting its problems to those of other histories”). She tells us, again pace Joan Scott, that a literary approach to gender downplays human agency and offers no constructive means of historical explanation. And she tells us that social history, as it has been informed and altered by women’s history in the last twenty years, is the best place for connection between women’s history and “the agenda of history as a whole.”

scholarly journals Women, Bridal Girdles, and the Household in Renaissance Prague

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Anna Parker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Property System ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Women’S History

Abstract This article addresses early modern women's power through an object study of the wedding girdle, a thickly embellished belt that was the most costly, emblematic, and intimate item in a Renaissance bride's trousseau, and which uniquely illuminates the lives of women. Building on the work that women's history has done to uncover how women navigated the patriarchal system, I propose that a focus on the household is vital to understanding the socially specific ways in which burgher women – members of the citizen class of Renaissance Prague – exerted agency in their daily lives. Burgher sensibilities, specifically the desire to display the prosperity, industry, and piety of their households, created distinct mechanisms for women to assert themselves. This article sets women's lives against the interwoven structures of the household, namely, gendered roles and expectations, the legal property system, and moral discourses surrounding marriage. By levering these structures, the same that constrained them, burgher women were able to express power.

scholarly journals Subtle invasions: Aspects of Samoan women's wartime experiences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Saui'a Louise Marie Tuimanuolo Mataia-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Women's Agency ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Women’S Agency ◽  
Sexual Encounters ◽  
Women’S History

<p>During World War Two the peaceful “occupation” of the Samoa Islands by US Forces combined with existing colonial conditions to transform the lives of Samoans in important yet also subtle ways. Drawing on thirty two oral history interviews and the papers of the colonial administrations this thesis examines the wartime lives of Samoan women. Their accounts of their experiences reveal how they understood the war at the time and after years of life experience. Using approaches from social history and women’s history this thesis illustrates women’s agency in finding ways to manage the new social contexts and situations created by the war.  The central argument of this thesis is that it was the ordinary business of negotiating daily life during the war that engaged and normalised social changes. These mundane everyday acts were significant historical moments that wove new and unique motifs into the tapestry of Samoan women’s history. The war brought to Samoa a multitude of American servicemen who saw Samoa through a ‘romantic’ lens as an arcadia of unrestrained social mores. In contrast, through this research Samoan women reveal their wartime experiences in their own words. The women’s narratives indicate that the war interrupted lives in many ways causing them to rethink their roles in response to the changes.  The four areas of Samoan women’s lives that this thesis examines are their roles in their families and communities, their involvement with the churches, their engagement with wartime popular culture and lastly their wartime sexual encounters. The discussion opens with a portrait of Samoan society during the 1920s and 1930s, depicting the social and political forces that shaped women’s lives and influenced their understandings of their wartime experiences. This discussion highlights how colonial entanglements had a bearing on the different trajectories that women’s lives took during the war. The thesis then turns to explore the arrival of the war, examining the women’s initial experiences and reactions with a particular focus on what they learnt from their experiences and how they adapted to change in the context of their communities and families. The study finds that social transformation was a response to the war’s disruption of physical and cultural space and the critical structures and ideologies that are central to Samoans’ way of life.  The second part of this enquiry examines how wartime circumstances affected Samoan women’s sometimes tense relations with the Christian churches. The churches occupied a central place in Samoan society as a provider of both spiritual nurture and secular education for women during the war years, so they deserve specific attention. Wartime conditions created opportunities that expanded and rejuvenated the scope of Samoan women’s agency which had been marginalised and narrowed by Christian influence before the war. At the same time, the war heightened the pre-war tensions between Samoan women’s agency and the power of the churches. Despite the clergy’s reluctance, the churches provided spaces in which American troops socialised with the Samoan population, creating social situations that were difficult to control.  The third area analyses Samoan women’s engagement with wartime popular culture and how the consumption of introduced material culture galvanised their autonomy and enabled them to tailor social transformation to suit their personal perceptions. Wartime popular culture in its many forms contributed to the rapid absorption of new ideas and the adaptation of cultural practices. Women’s engagement with this popular culture resulted in ‘on the ground changes’ that stimulated social transformation and which should be appreciated as significant historical moments in their own right.  The fourth area of discussion investigates Samoan women’s wartime sexual encounters. The perception that Samoan women’s sexual encounters with American servicemen were characterised by an unrestrained morality on their part ignores other factors that shaped these encounters, including violence and their own bodily knowledge and preparedness. This study shows that Samoan women had a variety of sexual encounters during the war and their narratives speak volumes about the pains of such life-changing moments.  There was no single or archetypal wartime experience. The thirty two interviewees experienced the war in different parts of the Samoa islands and their social and political alignment has influenced their perceptions and understanding of their wartime lives. The social transformation brought by the war involved considered responses from the women who sought to balance personal and family interests and Samoan values. Exploring the women’s wartime lives reveals their resilience and their ability to overcome difficulties and effect change for the better of their community.</p>

Response

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-480
Author(s):  
Louise A. Tilly
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Women's History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Answering Questions ◽  
Women’S History

Judith Bennett has persuaded me that in the oral version of this paper I conflated five points: (1) All women’s history has a feminist motivation and message. (2) Descriptive women’s history has discovered valuable evidence about women in the past; this has now been accepted as historical “fact.” (3) Sociological use of gender as a concept adds an analytical edge to descriptive accounts. (4) Social history that makes gender and women’s experience problematic and analyzes it systematically can add to the achievements of descriptive/interpretive women’s history. (5) Both types of women’s history (descriptive/interpretive and analytical) can only benefit from explicitly demonstrating the ways in which their findings contribute to answering questions already on the historical agenda. I have revised my paper somewhat to clarify these points.

An agenda for women’s history in Ireland, 1500–1900: Part I: 1500–1800

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (109) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret MacCurtain ◽  
Mary O’Dowd
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Women's History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women’S History

In the last twenty years women’s history has emerged as a major field of scholarly inquiry. An extensive literature has accumulated on the history of women in western Europe and North America, and the contribution which women have made to many different aspects of western society has been rediscovered. New areas of study have been developed as the gender differences in men’s and women’s lives have been recognised and researched. The expanding secondary literature has also led to a lively debate about the purpose, methodology and theory of women’s history. A central focus of discussion has been the relationship between women’s history and mainstream history. Initially research on the history of women tended to work within the parameters of traditional history: to be fitted into its ‘empty spaces’. But dissatisfaction with the male-centred and patriarchal nature of the predominant historical discourse has led women historians to seek out new methodologies and to argue that consideration of history from the perspective of women, as well as of men, is a major challenge to the whole nature of historical inquiry. As Gerda Lerner, a pioneer of women’s history in the United States, put it, women’s history challenges the traditional assumption that man is the measure of all that is significant, and that the activities pursued by men are by definition significant, while those pursued by women are subordinate in importance. It challenges the notion that civilization is that which men have created, defended, and advanced while women had babies and serviced families and to which they, occasionally and in a marginal way, ‘contributed’.

Gender, Women’s History, and Social History

1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise A. Tilly
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Social History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Analytical Problem ◽  
Women And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Olympe De Gouges ◽  
Women’S History ◽  
The Revolution

Recently, I attended a seminar at which a historian of women presented a dazzling interpretation of the polemical writing of Olympe de Gouges and its (not to mention her) reception during the French Revolution. A crusty old historian of the Revolution rose during the question period and inquired, in his own eastern twang, “Now that I know that women were participants in the Revolution, what difference does it make!” This encounter suggested to me what I will argue are two increasingly urgent tasks for women’s history: producing analytical problem-solving studies as well as descriptive and interpretive ones, and connecting their findings to general questions already on the historical agenda. This is not a call for integrating women’s history into other history, since that process may mean simply adding material on women and gender without analyzing its implications, but for writing analytical women’s history and connecting its problems to those of other histories. Only through such an endeavor is women’s history likely to change the agenda of history as a whole.

Women's Collections in Egypt: Insights into the American University in Cairo's Rare Books and Special Collections Library and the Women and Memory Forum's Archives

Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-329
Author(s):  
Stephen Urgola ◽  
Maissan Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Feminist Research ◽  
American University ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Rare Books ◽  
Women’S History

Two institutions of relatively small size play a major role in documenting women's history in Egypt: the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSCL) of the American University in Cairo (AUC) and the Women and Memory Forum (WMF), a feminist research center in Cairo. This article presents case studies of these institutions’ efforts. The AUC RBSCL's collections are described, including those of leading 20th-century feminist leaders Huda Sharaawi (1879-1947), Doria Shafik (1908-1975), and Aziza Hussein (1919-2015), as are oral history initiatives related to women's history. The article also discusses programs and collections of the WMF, including private papers collections such as that of activist Wedad Mitri (1927-2007), and its Archive of Women's Oral History, which documents women's lives in Egypt and beyond. The initiatives in Egypt of the RBSCL and the WMF indicate how institutions can employ archival collecting, oral history, and outreach-like exhibitions to document and highlight women's historical contributions.

Women's History and Ottoman Sharia Court Records: Shifting Perspectives in Social History

Hawwa ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Agmon
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
North American ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Middle Eastern Women ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Turn ◽  
Women’S History

AbstractThis paper revisits some methodological and conceptual aspects of scholarly works on the social history of Middle Eastern women based on Ottoman court records that were published in the last three decades. It discusses the main approaches employed by historians in the field for analyzing court records, and the circumstances that shaped these patterns. It shows that, during the 1970s and 1980s, this body of scholarly works on women's history, as part of Middle Eastern social history, adhered to historiographical approaches that did not follow the "cultural turn" characterizing West European and North American historiography. This situation, however, has recently changed.

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