HIST3600

WOMEN’S HISTORY
WELCOME TO WOMEN’S HISTORY
Should you want to chat about history, the course, or any related
issues, please contact me.
Contact details:
 Associate Professor Nancy Cushing (course coordinator)
 Email: Nancy.Cushing@newcastle.edu.au
 Room: MCLG23 Callaghan; HO106 Ourimbah
 Phone: 02 4348 4055
 My formal consultation hours are Wednesdays, 11-12 in MCLG23. I
am around otherwise, moving between campuses and in the Faculty
Office as Assistant Dean Research Training. Email to set up an
appointment or a phone call at other times.
HIST3600
WOMEN’S HISTORY
ANCIENT TO POSTMODERN
In this lecture, we will:
Examine some of the key
concepts and themes related to
Women’s History
10:00 Hear from the Careers
Service
Introduce ourselves
Discuss the conduct of the
Ulrich Molitor. De Lamiis et Phitonicis
course, including assessment Mulieribus, 1493.
tasks
ON THE CONCEPT OF WOMANHOOD
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second
Sex, 1949
One is not born, but rather
becomes, woman. No biological,
psychic, or economic destiny
defines the figure that the human
female takes on in society; it is
civilization as a whole that
elaborates this intermediary
product between the male and
the eunuch that is called feminine.
Only the mediation of another
can constitute an individual as an
Other. (Ch. 1, Childhood).
GERDA LERNER:
WHY WOMEN NEED A HISTORY

To be without history is to be
trapped in the present where
oppressive social relations appear
natural and inevitable.
Knowledge of history is
knowledge that things have
changed and do change. Quoted
in Houses of History, Gender and
History)
CHANGE IS NOT THE SAME AS PROGRESS
USES OF WOMEN’S HISTORY
Unpack social relations
Reveal them to be cultural
constructions, not natural and
inevitable
Explore how women have lived
their lives within, against and in
spite of limitations
To pass these insights on to
future generations
Has been less successful
Each generation tends to see
themselves as the first to have
insights into their own position, to
begin a struggle
THE PATRIARCHAL
EQUILIBRIUM
CONTINUITES – and CHANGES
- The patriarchal equilibrium is a concept posited by
historian Judith M. Bennett. A scholar of medieval
history, Bennett observed that there was remarkable
continuity in women’s status over time despite
enormous and potentially disruptive change. She
argued that this was due to a ‘patriarchal
equilibrium’ that ensured a continuity of women’s
collective low status relative to men.
This is a concept we will test and revisit.
APPROACHES TO WOMEN’S HISTORY
1960s – focus on exceptional women who succeed on men’s terms
1970s – challenge existing histories; insist that issues/ topics of
importance in women’s lives are historically important. Open up new
areas of enquiry in which women are not peripheral
Challenge existing ideas of historical periods
1980s – exposing the oppression of women and how they responded
to discrimination, to encourage contemporary women to take up the
cause
1990s - women not victims but have agency – explore strategies and
negotiations in male dominated world
2000s – intersections – move out of man/woman binary – how women
engage with other women, with place, space, technology, other species
What is next? Moving to post women’s history? When all history
equally treats both sexes.
 General Periodisation
776 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000
BCE
- 476
Classical
Antiquity

Early
Middle
Ages
High
Middle
Ages
Late
Middle
Ages
Renaissan
ce

Early
Modern
Period
Modernity

Post-
modernity
 Alternative HIST3600 Women’s History Timeline
600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

Women in the
Roman
Republic
Footbinding Song
China

Abbasid 750 1258

Harem

Witches 1420s 1630s

Women, Work The

and European Brew-
sters
Medieval
Society
Women & the Mary
coming of Toft
modernity
Women and 1492 Carib Aus-
colonialism Colum bean tralia
bus

Second Wave 1960

Feminism s/70s

Women and Indus- Atomic

the trial bomb
Revolu 1945
Anthropocene tion
GENDER HISTORY
Organised around ideas and assumptions attached to concepts of
masculinity and femininity
How they change over time and space
How they affect people’s lives
Once a dichotomy – only two options – now more nuanced as people
recognise and assert a variety of gender identities
A response to the recognition that men are also affected by gendered
thinking
Rise of studies of masculinity but women-centred histories continue to
dominate the field
INTERSECTIONALITY
Terms first used in 1989, with regard to anti discrimination legislation
in the US
Identifies that various social categories – race, class, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, age, ability, nationality, etc. - work together to advantage
or disadvantage people
Raises the issue of whether one’s femininity is the most important
aspect of identity; women often don’t see each other as women first,
but as of a race, class, age, disability or other category
Second Wave Feminists accused of putting their own interests first and
ignoring greater claims of other women
 THE IM/POSSIBILITY OF WOMEN’S
HISTORY
The impossibility – the obstacles
- It is impossible to study women’s
history without men (and the
opposite is true)
- It is impossible because it assumes
that ‘women’ or ‘women’s issues’ are
the same
- What do you see as other
challenges?
The possibility – why bother?
- Helps to recover our full human story
- Balances that story
- Heightens awareness of complexity
- Assists consideration of structured
inequalities through the lens of sex and
gender
- Celebrates, memorializes, educates us
about women’s experiences.
 STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE

This course will be divided into thematic units:

Module 1: Early European Women's History
Module 2: Women of the East and Global South
Module 3: Women in “new” worlds

For more detail of content, presentation and assessment, we will look at the
weekly guide available on Blackboard.