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Women's History Methodology: Assumptions

What we call "women's history" is an approach to the study of history. Women's history is based on the idea that history, as it is usually studied and written, largely ignores women and women's contributions.

Women's history assumes that ignoring women and women's contributions leaves out important parts of the full story of history. Without looking at the women and their contributions, history is not complete. Writing women back into history means gaining a fuller understanding of history.

A purpose of many historians, since the time of the first known historian, Herodotus, has been to shed light on the present and the future by telling about the past. Historians have had as an explicit goal to tell an "objective truth" -- truth as it might be seen by an objective, or unbiased, observer.

But is objective history possible? That's a question those studying women's history have been asking loudly. Their answer, first, was that "no," every history and historians makes selections, and most have left out the perspective of women. Women who played an active role in the public events were often forgotten quickly, and the less obvious roles women played "behind the scenes" or in private life are not easily studied. "Behind every great man there's a woman," an old saying goes. If there is a woman behind -- or working against -- a great man, do we truly understand even that great man and his contributions, if the woman is ignored or forgotten?

In the field of women's history, the conclusion has been that no history can be truly objective. Histories are written by real people with their real biases and imperfections, and their histories are full of conscious and unconscious errors. The assumptions historians make shape what evidence they look for, and therefore what evidence they find. If historians do not assume that women are part of history, then the historians won't even be looking for evidence of women's role.

Does that mean that women's history is biased, because it, too, has assumptions about women's role? And that "regular" history is, on the other hand, objective? From the perspective of women's history, the answer is "No." All historians and all histories are biased. Being conscious of that bias, and working to uncover and acknowledge our biases, is the first stop towards more objectivity, even if full objectivity is not possible.

Women's history, in questioning whether histories have been complete without paying attention to the women, is also trying to find a "truth." Women's history, essentially, values searching for more of the "whole truth" over maintaining illusions that we already have found it.

So, finally, another important assumption of women's history is that it's important to "do" women's history. Retrieving new evidence, examining old evidence from the perspective of the women, looking even for what lack of evidence might speak of in its silence -- these are all important ways to fill in the "rest of the story."

Women's History Methodology: Assumptions

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