Gender in History: Global Perspectives

Updated with new material to reflect the latest developments in the field, Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd Edition, provides a concise overview of the.
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For, crucially, it demonstrates that gender is as significant as social class, race and ethnicity as a category of historical analysis, as well as providing novice historians with many insights into understanding history. This is not to ignore that it is also of value to more experienced historians, particularly because of its thematically arranged suggestions for further reading.

One of the most vexed questions in gender history is the relationship between social gender and biological sex. In her introduction Wiesner-Hanks leads readers through this complex debate, making them aware of the profound uncertainties about markers of sexual difference and the performative nature of gender, its adaptability and impermanence of meanings for men and women. The colliding ripples from such theoretical pebbles as post-structuralism, queer theory, post-colonial theory and critical-race theory also currently disturb the choppy waters of history. Wiesner-Hanks expertly navigates them to show that their cumulative impact for gender historians is to attack assumptions about the universality of experience.

The wide chronological and geographical scope of this book certainly reveals that gender is historically and geographically contingent. It is impressive that the author presents this information in an interesting and coherent way, avoiding the pit-falls of stereotyped over-generalisation and numbing lists of counter-examples. Wiesner-Hanks does us a great service by charting the distinctions and variations in gender structures, but her book also reveals the striking number of common themes across the world.

Women are invariably linked with the home.

This is expressed in a number of ways from possessing fewer legal and political freedoms than men to their absolute physical restriction within the home. These are tenacious phenomena. Laws were only repealed or amended within the last century and Chinese foot-binding, which began around and forced women to remain within the confines of the home, did not completely die out until the s. Veiling, of course, is still going strong, with the first recorded evidence from the ancient Near East around BCE testifying both to its longevity and its independence of specific religious traditions.

These practices are usually justified by ideas about protecting women from other men and, therefore, blood-lines and inheritances from impurity. Gender in History reminds us, however, that several factors have influenced the extent to which such traditions are enforced.


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Most commonly, necessity has ensured that many women have possessed more agency in terms of making decisions and managing family, household, domestic economy and property than these customs and law codes would suggest. Seclusion, for example, has often signified membership of a wealthy elite.

Thus peasant women in China did not have their feet bound, because they needed to work. This occasionally cut across gender, so that it was elite men in the Ottoman Empire who rarely left the household. Other traditions have altered gendered domestic roles. Jewish men who took the ideal path of devoting themselves to piety and the study of religious texts were economically dependent upon their wives, who worked to support them and their children. Of course those wives whose husbands were absent through work or war and conquest were more likely to make unilateral decisions and choices.

Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd Edition

Many homes were and are the site of profound domestic double-standards, with women doing all the domestic work, whatever their other labour. It is equally prevalent in political systems founded upon equality between the sexes. In the Soviet Union, for example, women made up more than half the full time labour force but continued to do most household work.

This book emphasises that mixed messages about women and men are hardly unusual.

Gender in History: Global Perspectives by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

In particular, many religious traditions convey conflicting ideas about the relative status of the sexes because they draw upon existing traditions to articulate their message and shape their ritual. In animism, paganism and shamanism women and men are often perceived to have the same access to the spirit world. This can be empowering for women but it does not always equate with equal status with men and can have dangerous consequences.


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After all, close contact could be with bad spirits as well as good, leading in some cases to accusations of witchcraft. Combined with ideas about their weakness they can thus easily be seen as susceptible to diabolical influences. Those women who have been moved by divine inspiration to get involved in military or political affairs are often subject to harsh measures to remove them from this sphere. Although religions like Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism make spiritual fulfilment equally available to both sexes, and while female saints and deities have provided positive role models, women have still been conceptualised as the secondary, subordinate sex to men.

Gender in history : global perspectives

They also threaten male achievement of spiritual goals. In Buddhism and Christianity, for example, men have at times been obliged to be detached from desire in order to achieve the sinless life necessary for enlightenment or spiritual fulfilment. As a result women were defined as sexual temptation.

Actually, a theme that permeates this book is the way that women have been seen as a threat to everything from morals, genetic and property inheritance, to financial liquidity and social order. Thus their exclusion from many institutions often appears to be a defensive act. Please verify that you are not a robot.

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Description Updated with new material to reflect the latest developments in the field, Gender in History: Global Perspectives, 2nd Edition, provides a concise overview of the construction of gender in world cultures from the Paleolithic era to modern times. Includes examples drawn from the most recent scholarship relating to a diverse range of cultures, from Ancient Mesopotamia to post-Soviet Russia, and from the Igbo of Nigeria, to the Iroquois of north eastern North America. Reflects new developments in the field with added coverage of primates, slavery, colonialism, masculinity, and transgender issues Features significant discussion of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, an important trend in the study of world history Lays out key theoretical and methodological issues in an introduction that is written in accessible language Supplementary material for instructors and students available at www.

Student View Student Companion Site. She is the co-editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor of twenty books and numerous articles that have appeared in English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. Table of contents Reviews Chronological Table of Contents.

S ex and Gender. Gender History and Theory. Structure of the Book. The Origins of Patriarchy. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia bce— bce. The Classical Cultures of China, India, and the.