About Women's History

Four Perspectives

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0 I have to start with what I'll call the "zero" approach -- or history without attention to women's roles -- women are virtually ignored. The assumption is that women didn't play a part in history, or the part they played was not important, so no effort is required to study women's history. Women are "behind the scenes" and have no impact on what is formally considered "history."

1 In the first approach that can be called "women's history," the invisibility of women is revealed to be untrue: that is, women are invisible only if we don't bother to look for them or remember what they did. Women who did play important roles or who had a real impact on what was normally included as "history" are highlighted. You might think of this as the "famous women" approach: yes, there were women writers and women artists and women doctors and women rulers, historians just forgot to write about them.

An example of this might be a series of stories of women in the Bible. A women's history of the Christian Scriptures, for instance, might point out that Paul calls a woman his "teacher." The fact that Paul spoke out against women speaking in the churches tells us that women were speaking in the churches: you don't have to admonish people not to do something, if nobody is trying to do it. Through direct evidence (women who did play roles) or indirect evidence (such as strong rules formally forbidding women from public activities), the actual public contributions of women are uncovered or "dis-covered."

2 Once the presence of women in history is acknowledged, then a question arises: why weren't there more women? Why were so many forgotten? And so the next approach to women's history looks at the social dynamics that defined some activities as permissible for women, and shut women out of other roles. How did it develop that in some countries, women were permitted more public functions than in others? Why in some times are women "pushed back" into the home? I would call this the "discrimination" approach: how were women discriminated against, purposefully or unconsciously excluded from history's memory as well as from influential roles? An underlying assumption is that men and women are basically the same, and different roles must result from discriminatory treatment.

An example of this approach might be to examine an interesting archeological discovery in the catacombs of Italy in the 1980s. A wall painting was discovered, which was interpreted, because of the symbols present, as an early depiction of the Christian communion service. Then someone pointed out that all the figures in the painting had to be women, based on the clothing they were depicted as wearing. And so many experts re-examined the painting, and declared that it could not be a Christian communion service, because only women were present.

A "discrimination" approach to women's history would make us say "Wait a minute!" on hearing that conclusion. "Just because the later Christian church didn't include women in sacramental roles, doesn't mean that women never had those roles!" And so a "discrimination approach" women's historian would look not only at the forces within the early Christian church might have gradually excluded women from sacramental roles that some once exercised, but would also look at how the archeologists' assumptions were shaping their interpretation of the catacomb painting, using their assumptions about the roles women played later to possibly misinterpret the early evidence.

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© 2000 Jone Lewis
Text copyright 2000-2001 © Jone Johnson Lewis. All rights reserved.