Her Story - Uncovering Women's Lives
Social history resources about specific aspects of women's lives are very common, in print and on the Internet . What laws influenced their lives - marriage laws, divorce laws, child custody laws, lack of laws protecting women from economic exploitation or physical violence by their husbands? What kind of work did women do, inside and outside the home? Work outside the home for women was surprisingly common, although married women before the 19th century had little independent control over the economic fruits of their labor. The earnings of 19th century women in Britain, for example, belonged to their husband prior to the passing of the 1882 Married Property Act. What was the state of medical knowledge and practice? Were babies delivered by midwives or doctors? How many children did women lose to epidemics, accidents and other death -- and how many of these would be curable today? Secondary sources - books and articles about women's lives, rather than primary sources which are written by women about their own lives - are also useful because they help fill in details that such primary sources leave out. There were many subjects that our ancestors probably didn't wish to commit to writing - sexuality, childbirth, addiction, bastardy and infanticide to name a few. Published social history works can help you to learn how these issues may have affected your female ancestor. Many wonderful overviews of the lives and roles of women in society have been published. Books like The Other Civil War by Catherine Clinton give incredible detail about American women of the 19th century -- Clinton's book pays close attention to the ways in which women's lives changed during that time. Good Wives by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich documents details of New England women in 1650-1750; Founding Mothers by Linda Grant de Pauw gives a good overview of women's lives in the late 18th century; The Marriage Exchange by Martha C. Howell examines how Renaissance women fought to protect their interests and that of their children in a male-dominated society. Hundreds of scholarly articles have been written since the 1970s focusing on the day-to-day lives of women in many parts of the world and in many eras: you can find a good index to such articles on the Internet at the Women's History page of the International Institute of Social History. More on women's lives and social history:Books:
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URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa022403e.htm
© 2002-2003 Kimberly Powell and Jone Johnson Lewis. Licensed to About.com.
A version of this article originally appeared in Everton's Family History Magazine, March 2002.
