University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI
This third edition first published 2022
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Edition History
Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2001), Wiley-Blackwell (2e, 2011)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E., 1952- author.
Title: Gender in history : global perspectives / Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI.
Description: Third edition. | Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021021138 (print) | LCCN 2021021139 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119719205 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119719274 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119719236 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex role–History. | Social history.
Classification: LCC HQ1075 .W526 2022 (print) | LCC HQ1075 (ebook) | DDC 305.3/09–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021138
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021139
Cover image: © Picture of Men and Women from all nations by Utagawa Yoshiiku/Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005, The MET, Creative Commons Zero (CC0)Cover design by Wiley
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Acknowledgments
Each book that I have written has encouraged me to range wider chronologically and geographically from my original home base in early modern Germany, which has meant that I have entered territories in which I know less and less. Fortunately I have found my scholarly colleagues to be uniformly gracious in sharing their expertise, providing assistance and advice, often in the process turning from colleagues to friends. For this book I would like to thank Constantin Fasolt, who asked me to write the first edition, Tessa Harvey, the development editor at Wiley-Blackwell in the 2000s, who encouraged its progress and suggested I write a second edition, and Jennifer Manias, Sophie Bradwell, and Andrew Minton at Wiley-Blackwell, with whom I worked on this third edition. My graduate student Brice Smith combed the library and the web for new materials as I set out to write the second edition; the results of his labors, along with many original sources, can be found on the instructor companion website. My thoughts on the issues discussed here have been influenced over the years by a great many people; my list could go on for pages, but I would particularly like to thank: Barbara Andaya, Judith Bennett, Jodi Bilinkoff, Renate Bridenthal, David Christian, Elizabeth Cohen, Natalie Zemon Davis, Mary Delgado, Lisa DiCaprio, Candice Goucher, Anne Hansen, Scott Hendrix, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Grethe Jacobsen, Margaret Jolly, Susan Karant-Nunn, Deirdre Keenan, Gwynne Kennedy, Susan Kingsley Kent, JoAnn McNamara, Teresa Meade, Jeffrey Merrick, Pavla Miller, Laura Mitchell, Susanne Mrozik, Mary Elizabeth Perry, Allyson Poska, Diana Robin, Lyndal Roper, Ulinka Rublack, Anne Schutte, Bonnie Smith, Hilda Smith, Ulrike Strasser, Susan Stuard, Larissa Taylor, Gerhild Scholz Williams, and Heide Wunder.
About the Companion Website
This book is accompanied by an instructor companion website.
www.wiley.com/go/wiesner-hanks/genderinhistory3e
This website includes
Original Sources
Further Readings
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
The title of this book would have made little sense to me when I chose to be a history major nearly five decades ago. I might perhaps have thought it an analysis of linguistic developments, as gender was something I considered (and bemoaned) largely when learning German nouns. The women’s movement changed that, as it changed so much else. The feminist movement that began in the 1960s – often termed the “second wave” to set it apart from the “first wave” of feminism that began in the nineteenth century – included a wide range of political beliefs, with various groups working for a broad spectrum of goals, one of which was to understand more about the lives of women in the past. This paralleled a similar rise of interest in women’s history that accompanied the first wave of feminism.
Women’s and Gender History
Advocates of women’s rights in the present, myself included, looked at what we had been taught about the past – as well as what we had been taught about literature, psychology, religion, biology, and most other disciplines – and realized we were hearing only half the story. Most of the studies we read or heard described the male experience – “man the artist,” “man the hunter,” “man and his environment” – though they often portrayed it as universal. We began to investigate the lives of women in the past, asserting that any investigation of past power relationships had to include discussion of patriarchy, that predominant social system in which men have more power and access to resources than women of thesame group, and in which some men are privileged over other