Women's history as an approach to history is built on the basic idea that history as it is usually told tends to ignore women and women's contributions.

Women's history also takes as an assumption that ignoring women and women's contributions is not good. Leaving women out means that important parts of the full story of history aren't being told. Writing women back into history means gaining a fuller understanding of history.

Historians have, since the time of the first known historian, Herodotus, tried to shed light on the present and the future by telling about the past. A goal of historians has been 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 women's historians have been asking loudly since the 1970s. Their answer, first, was that "no," even the historians who struggled hardest to write the objective truth about history, usually left out the perspective of women: women who played an active role in the public events were often forgotten quickly, and many women played a behind-the-scenes role, working at home. "Behind every great man there's a woman," an old saying goes. And if there is a woman behind the great man, do we truly understand even that great man and his contributions, if the woman is ignored?

So, women's historians say, no history is really objective. Histories are written by real people with their imperfections, and the histories are full of conscious and unconscious errors. If women aren't assumed to be part of history, then the historian won't look for evidence of women's role. One's assumptions help shape what evidence one looks for, and therefore what evidence one finds.

But does that mean that women's history is biased, because it has assumptions about women's role? And that "regular" history is, on the other hand, objective? No, says the women's historian. All historians and all histories are biased. What is important is to try to uncover and discover and acknowledge the biases we have, and in doing that, try to overcome at least some of the effects of that bias.

I received an email recently from someone who was furious that I'd questioned, in another article on this site, whether Betsy Ross really sewed the first American flag. He didn't argue with my evidence. (He did make several spelling errors in his diatribe about growing illiteracy, but that's just an amusing side issue.) What he argued was that by questioning an important story in American history, I was unpatriotic. He was saying very clearly that the evidence for or against Betsy Ross making the first flag was less important than the effect of the story on its audience. (He also accused me of "political correctness" but I can't think of a clearer example of "political correctness" than his own argument: ignore the facts if they get in the way of your political goals.)

Yes, it's disturbing to discover that history we learned as "true" was either incomplete or in error. But any history will be. Much evidence is missing; people didn't save everything. (Betsy Ross didn't keep a diary so we could discover whether or not George Washington and the two other men really visited her, or if she did keep such a diary, it's lost.) At other times, people write records from their own biased perspective. Other times, people's memories aren't perfect when they're writing. (Think of the game "Rumor" or "Telephone" or "Whisper," where one person whispers a story to the next, and so on around a circle, until the story at the end is told aloud and it's clear that it's been completely changed.)

But 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."

Next in this series: Four approaches to women's history. Past the basic assumptions outlined above, there are some different assumptions that different women's historians make in "doing" history.

Also in this series: A Short Overview of women's history

Related feature: E-Texts and Women's History

Illustrations in this article:
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