FEMINIST HISTORIOGRAPHY

Safina Azeem Qureashi

 WHAT IS FEMINIST HISTORIOGRAPHY?

Rereading history from a feminist lens, the viewpoint of female bodies.

Differs from history of feminism and women’s history.
To change the nature of historical analysis and include gender and employ a critical feminist
lens.
As there is no single type of feminism, feminist historiography is also a diverse discipline.
Women as historical subjects and agents.
“the purpose of that change is political: to challenge the practices of the historical discipline
that have belittled and oppressed women, and to create practices that allow women an
autonomy and space for self-definition”
-Jill Matthews.
 CRITIQUE OF TRADITIONAL
HISTORIOGRAPHY

• Objectivity
• Certainty
• Universality
 THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

• Gender relations (interactions and power balances) are a key dynamic of all societies.
• Sexual organisation of society (the sexual division of labour, the distinctions between public and private realms, the
relations between procreation and desire, the natures of families) is integral to every conception of social structure and
social change
• Women's situation or status is a social matter and not a natural phenomenon and is therefore capable of being
historically analysed
• The mere fact of being a woman, at any time in any place, means having a particular kind of social and hence
historical experience.
• There is no history of a ‘Woman’. (Intersectionality)
• Lived experiences of men or work of male historians cannot be expected to communicate for womxn.
• Women’s history is not the same as Men’s history.
 DISAPPEARING WOMAN

• Feminist historiography has a dual mission.

• Neglected culture.
“On the one hand to recover the lives, experiences, and mentalities of women
from the condescension and obscurity in which they have been so unnaturally
placed, and on the other to reexamine and rewrite the entire historical narrative to
reveal the construction and workings of gender”
Susan Penderson
 PATRIARCHAL EQUILIBRIUM

• Judith Bennett.
• Feminist approach to Medieval History.
• Long Duree perspective to understand lack of transformation in women’s status
in comparison to men, over time.
 SOURCES

• Matthews, Jill. “Feminist History.” Labour History, no. 50, 1986, pp. 147–
153. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27508788. Accessed 5 Dec. 2020.
•  "Pedersen, Susan. "The Future of Feminist History"". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
• Bennett, Judith M. History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism.
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhtgm. Accessed 5 Dec. 2020.
• Nair, Janaki. “The Troubled Relationship of Feminism and History.” Economic
and Political Weekly, vol. 43, no. 43, 2008, pp. 57–65.,
www.jstor.org/stable/40278103. Accessed 5 Dec. 2020.