About Women's History

A Short Overview An article by your Women's History Guide, Jone Johnson Lewis

What is there about "women's history" that is distinct from the broader study of history? Why study "women's history" and not just history? And are the techniques of women's history any different from the techniques of all historians?

The course of study called "women's history" began in the 1970s with the rise of feminist thinking about women's issues. Some historians noticed that women's perspective and earlier feminist movements were largely left out of the history books. These historians, mostly women, began to offer courses or lectures that highlighted what history looked like, from a woman's perspective.

These historians asked questions like, "What were women doing?" in various periods of history. As they uncovered nearly-forgotten history of women's struggles for equality and freedom, they realized that a short lecture or single course would not be adequate. Most of the scholars were surprised at the amounts of material that were, indeed, available. And so the fields of women's studies and women's history were begun to seriously study not only the history and issues of women -- but also to try to keep the history from being once more forgotten.

In uncovering some sources of historical material, they also realized that other sources were lost or unavailable. Because at most times in history women's roles were not in the public realm, their part in history often didn't make it into the historical records.

To study women's history, a student has to be creative: the official documents and older history books don't always include much of what's needed to understand what women were doing in a period of history.

Instead, the women's historian often needs to turn to journals and diaries and letters, which were forms of writing by some women that were preserved. Sometimes women wrote for journals and magazines, too, though the material may not have been collected as rigorously as writings by men have.

Also, the middle school and high school student of history can usually find appropriate resources analyzing different periods of history as good source materials to answer common historical questions. But because women's history has not been studied as widely, even the middle or high school student may have to do the kinds of research usually found in college history classes: finding more detailed sources that illustrate the point, and forming conclusions from them.

As an example: if a student is trying to discover what a soldier's life was during the American Civil War, there are many books that address that directly. But the student who wants to know what a woman's life was like during the American Civil War may have to dig a bit deeper. She or he may have to read through some diaries of women who stayed at home during the war, or find the rare stories of the nurses or spies or even women who fought as soldiers dressed as men.

Fortunately, since the 1970s, much more has been written on women's history, and so the material that a student can consult is increasing.

In uncovering women's history, one other conclusion that many of today's students of women's history have come to: the 1970s may have been the beginning of the formal study of women's history, but the topic was hardly new. Little had been written in the years from 1920 to 1965 on the topic (I'll talk about some notable exceptions in the next article in this series). But for several centuries, there had been books written that analyzed women's contributions to history. Most had sat in libraries or had been tossed out in the years in between, and were no longer studied much. But there are some fascinating sources pre-1920 that cover topics in women's history surprisingly astutely.

Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century is perhaps the best-known example of this tradition.

Anna Garlin Spencer © 2000 www.arttoday.com

I've added to this site an essay written by Spencer and published in 1913. In this essay, she analyzes the role of what she calls the "post-graduate mother" -- women who, after they've had their children, are sometimes considered by cultures to have outlived their usefulness.

The essay may be a bit difficult to read because some of her references are not as well known to us today, and because her writing is a style current nearly a hundred years ago, and sounds somewhat alien to our ears.

But many ideas in the essay are quite modern. For instance, much current research on the witch crazes of Europe and American are focusing on those tragic times as issues of women's history: why was it that most of the victims of the witchhunts were women? And often women who didn't have male protectors in their families? Spencer speculates on just that question, with answers much like those current today in women's history.

For a look at a study of women's history before women's history became a formal course of study, I recommend this Spencer essay:

The Social Uses of the Post-Graduate Mother
By Anna Garlin Spencer, from Woman's Share in Social Culture

Next in this series on "how to look at women's history": basic assumptions behind women's history. Is it about truth, or "political correctness"?

After that: Four Perspectives: Approaches to Women's History

Previous feature: E-Texts and Women's History

Illustrations in this article:
Modifications © 2000 Jone Lewis
Text copyright 2000-2001 © Jone Johnson Lewis

Previous Features

Also on this site:

• Theory and Practice - Doing Women's History
  Resources on the web about the history, theory and practice of women's history
• Research Resources
  Even more resources for the researcher into women's history