As an approach to women's history, subjectivity looks at how a woman herself (the "subject") saw her role, and how she saw that role as contributing (or not) to her identity and meaning. It is an attempt to see history from the perspective of the individuals who lived that history, especially ordinary women, and requires taking seriously "women's consciousness."
Key features of a subjective approach to women's history:
- it is a qualitative rather than quantitative study
- emotion is taken seriously
- it requires a kind of historic empathy
In the subjective approach, the historian asks "not only how gender defines women's treatment, occupations, and so on, but also how women perceive the personal, social and political meanings of being female." From Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck, A Heritage of Her Own, "Introduction."
Ellen Carol DuBois is among those who challenged this emphasis: "There is a very sneaky kind of antifeminism here..." because it tends to ignore politics. ("Politics and Culture in Women's History," Feminist Studies 1980.) Other women's history scholars find that the subjective approach enriches political analysis.
