Gender A World History

"On November 24, 1929, rumors that British colonial officials planned to tax Igbo women reached the village of Oloko in southeastern Nigeria. Mark Emeruwa, instructed by the local warrant chief, Okugu, to carry out a census of women in preparation for their taxation, entered the compound of a woman named Nwanyeruwa and told her to begin counting her animals. She replied angrily that people had died from colonial counting, and insulted him and his mother by demanding of him, "Was your mother counted?" Emeruwa, enraged, grabbed her by the throat and tried to throttle her. She, her hands wet with oil from the palm nuts she had been pounding, smeared his Western-style suit with the red sticky stuff. He ran off to Okugu's compound to tell him of the events. The warrant chief summoned her to his dwelling and insisted she would pay the tax, threatening her with deep trouble and promising that "when the District Officer comes, he will take charge of you." To a woman uncertain of what lay in store under the British legal system, his threat could well have meant she would be executed. Upon hearing of Okugu's treatment of Nwanyeruwa, a large crowd of women surrounded his compound. There they "sat on" him, a locally recognized practice undertaken when men committed offenses against women. When "sitting on a man," women danced and sang until the object of their grievance acknowledged his offense and promised to make restitution. In this particular instance, the chief not only refused to admit to any wrong-doing, he set male members of his compound on the women, causing injury to eight of them. In response to Okugu's transgressions-entirely out of step with the expectations of his office-and owing to the persistent rumors of taxation of women circulating in other towns and villages, enormous crowds of women-amounting to tens of thousands-attacked native courts, looted banks, and stormed a number of European warehouses in a variety of towns and villages in southeastern Nigeria"--

Completely updated to include with new chapters, this is second edition is a fascinating exploration of what happens to established ideads about men and women, and their roles, when different cultural systems come into contact.

A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of womenaround the world, studies their interaction with men in genderedsocieties, and looks at the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. An extensive survey of the history of women around the world,their interaction with men, and the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. Discusses family history, the history of the body andsexuality, and cultural history alongside women’s history andgender history. Considers the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race andreligion to the formation of gendered societies. Contains both thematic essays and chronological-geographicessays. Gives due weight to pre-history and the pre-modern era as wellas to the modern era. Written by scholars from across the English-speaking world andscholars for whom English is not their first language.

Gender exists in almost every society as a way of organizing its people. Gender is used to assign certain responsibilities, obligations, and privileges to some, and to deny them to others. In Gender: A World History, Susan Kingsley Kent tells the story of this seemingly simple but in fact quite complex concept. With historical perspective she critically examines our everyday understandings of women and men, masculinity and femininity, and sexual difference in general. Central to this account is the conviction that gender is neither natural nor innocent. What passes for masculinity and femininity in one society might not do so in another. Even the passing of time can change what gender looks like in a particular culture. Thinking about the history of gender can also shed light on other types of relations, such as those between a government and its people, between different social classes, and between a colony and its colonizer. Ranging from prehistory to the present, this book presents a chronological picture of gender across the globe. From Hatshepsut and the rise of patriarchy in the ancient world, to the Bushido code of the samurai in wartime, to Susan B. Anthony and the women's rights movement in the United States, to the gay and trans rights movements of today, the force of gender in world history cannot be denied.

A concise yet comprehensive account of the roles and influences of gender over the millennia, featuring new and updated content throughout Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Third Edition, explores the construction and evolution of gender in many of the world’s cultures from the Paleolithic era to the COVID pandemic of the twenty-first century. Broad in geographic and topical scope, this comprehensive volume discusses the ways families, religions, social hierarchies, politics, work, education, art, sexuality, and other issues are linked to various conceptions of gender. Now organized chronologically rather than topically, this extensively revised edition presents a wealth of up-to-date information based on the scholarship of the last decade. New and expanded chapters offer insights on the connections between gender and key events and trends in world history, including domestication and the development of agriculture, the growth of cities and larger-scale political structures, the spread of world religions, changing ideas of race, class, and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, capitalism, wars, revolutions, and more. Written by a distinguished scholar in the field of women's and gender history, this third edition of Gender in History: Examines how gender roles were shaped by family life, religious traditions, various other institutions, and how the institutions were influenced by gender Considers why gender variations developed in different cultures and in diverse social, ethnic, and racial groups within a single culture Addresses ideas in different cultures that shaped both informal societal norms and formalized laws Explores debates about the origins of patriarchy, the development of complex gender hierarchies, and contemporary movements for social change Discusses the gender implications of modern issues including the global pandemic and ongoing cultural and economic shifts Includes an accessible introduction to key theoretical and methodological issues and an instructor’s website site with visual and written original sources Gender in History: Global Perspectives, Third Edition, is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as those on women’s history, women in world history, and gender in world history, and a valuable supplement for general survey courses within History and Women’s and Gender Studies programs.

In a pathbreaking study of the gendering of the practices of history, Bonnie Smith examines the differences in19th-century approaches to history between male and female perspectives. Smith demonstrates that even today, the practice of history is still propelled by fantasies of power and subjugation.

Women in World History brings together the most recent scholarship in women's and world history in a single volume covering the period from 1450 to the present, enabling readers to understand women's relationship to world developments over the past five hundred years. Women have served the world as unfree people, often forced to migrate as slaves, trafficked sex workers, and indentured laborers working off debts. Diseases have migrated through women's bodies and women themselves have deliberately spread religious belief and fervor as well as ideas. They have been global authors, soldiers, and astronauts encircling the globe and moving far beyond it. They have written classics in political and social thought and crafted literary and artistic works alongside others who were revolutionaries and reform-minded activists. Historical scholarship has shown that there is virtually no part of the world where women's presence is not manifest, whether in archives, oral testimonials, personal papers, the material record, evidence of disease and famine, myth and religious teachings, and myriad other forms of documentation. As these studies mount, the idea of surveying women's past on a global basis becomes daunting. This book aims to redress this situation and offer a synthetic world history of women in modern times.

An interrogation of the uses of gender as a tool for cultural and historical analysis. The revised edition reassesses the book's fundamental topic: the category of gender. In arguing that gender no longer serves to destabilize our understanding of sexual difference, the new preface and new chapter open a critical dialogue with the original book. From publisher description.

These essays chart major contributions to recent historiography. Carefully selected for their accessibility and accompanied by headnotes and study questions, the essays offer a clear and engaging introduction for the non-specialist. The introduction describes the emergence of gender as a subject of historical investigation and in ten essays, historians explore the meanings and significance of gender in American history since 1890. The volume shows how the interpretation of gender expands and revises our understanding of significant issues in twentieth-century history, such as work, labour protest, sexuality, consumption and social welfare. It offers new perspectives on visual representations and explores the politics of historical subjects and the politics of our own historical revisions.

Recent debates have used the concept of “transnational history” to broaden research on historical subjects that transcend national boundaries and encourage a shift away from official inter-state interactions to institutions, groups, and actors that have been obscured. This approach proves particularly fruitful for the dynamic field of global gender and women’s history. By looking at the restless lives and work of women’s activists in informal border-crossings, ephemeral NGOs, the lower management of established international organizations, and other global networks, this volume reflects the potential of a new perspective that allows for a more adequate analysis of transnational activities. By pointing out cultural hierarchies, the vicissitudes of translation and re-interpretation, and the ambiguity of intercultural exchange, this volume demonstrates the critical potential of transnational history. It allows us to see the limits of universalist and cosmopolitan claims so dear to many historical actors and historians.