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DOCUMENT RESUME SO 023 724 ED 369 678 AUTHOR Hughes, Sarah S. Gender at the Base of World History. TITLE 8 Jan 94 PUB DATE 14p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the NOTE American Historical Association (San Francisco, CA, January 6-9, 1994). Reports Speeches/Conference Papers (150) PUB TYPE Evaluative/Feasibility (142) MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE *Females; Higher Education; *Introductory Courses; DESCRIPTORS Sex; Sex Differences; *Sex Role; *Thematic Approach; *World History *Cultural Values IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Gender, a fundamental organizing principle of human societies, should be integral to world history survey courses. Students need to learn about the various distinctions of gender that have divided the sexes throughout history. As there is little time to squeeze more explanatory factors into a world history syllabus, it is critical to establish early that discerning the social meanings of male and female is one historical theme. It is important to remind students that the course is addressing women and men whose collect...ye activity is consequential. Teachers also must incorporate gender topics into testing. The division of labor, and student is a useful topic for gender discussion. misconceptions about it, Instructors may have to avoid unanswerable topics such as the role of the goddesses in antiquity and the origin of patriarchy. Early in the course, women may be angered and men may feel guilty about the low status of women throughout history. It is important to underscore societies in which women held high status. Furthurmore, the resistance of Native American women to European oppression offers important lessons about colonialism. For any such course there are invaluable resources available. Contains 13 endnotes. (SG) ***A*****A.%;.A.************************* *****************i Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. **********************i.AAAAA********************** Nie AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING JANUARY 6-9, 1994 for Matters of Content: Innovative Paradigms Session #78: Teaching the World History Survey Course World History Title of Paper: Gender at the Base of Sarah S. Hughes Author: PA Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, Affiliation: U S DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Otnce of Educanonet ReletCh end Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI s document nes been moroducact as recen,ed horn the 05,110h Or organrrabon ungtnanng O Mmot cns,ctes haste been made to wnprOsst reoroduchon Quality Pomits of ,new or opts ^3 staled trt thie d0Cle rnent do not neCes&s y renresent othcfaI OERI postbon or POItCY -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MAT RIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY cr, c TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC).- copied Not to be cited, quoted, or permission without the author's 2 human Gender is one fundamental organizing principle of history As such, it should be integral to world societias. economic systems, growth of cities survey courses -- as basic as Students need to learn and states, trade, conquest, or religion. distinctions of gender that have about the changing and various prehistory to the modern divided the lives of women and men from kept house Pervasive assumptions that women have always period. yield to knowledge about women's and cared for children should growing crops, in weaving productive labor in gathering and in marketing, and in providing textiles in homes and factories, Considering gender reveals critical essential social services. varying of societies differences in the family foundations how and ancestry calculated to from how marriages were contracted That women had no formed. property was transferred and classes is relevant to democratic theory public role in classical Athens voting American women's demand for and to understanding why religion, Whether considering rights was ridiculed before 1920. trade, gender usually literacy, health, art, slavery, war, or history accurately, we need to mattered and to teach world it mattered. explore this and explain how Feminism: A Glass Half Full, Judith Zinsser, in History and nearly twenty years since women points out that it has been relationships systematic analysis of gender historians called for Except among historical thought" 1 'fundamental category of a in university Gosch, this has not happened rs like Steve 3 Instead, a few women may be added, world history courses.2 to what is usually to discussions of Western societies -- added If you doubt this, not human history, but men's history. state; what recollect discussions of the modern democratic meaning does "democracy" have if half of adults are to Do your students learn about women's access disfranchised? twentieth century? Do basic civil and political rights in the Thailand and Turkey before they did they know that women voted in the I believe, more leadership at There is, in France?3 in state mandates that women be secondary school level, exhibited curriculum transformation included in history courses and in in World History Project, efforts, such as Philadelphia's Women district's model world which is creating units parallel to the is already A weakness of this approach history syllabus. "add and stir" women into an apparent, however; it is hard to to Comparative history needs rethinking impersonal batter. masculine and feminine incorporate significant patterns of behavior.4 of World History," is, then, My title, "Gender at the Base accomplish intention, than of what I actually more reflective of I teach three the traditional paradigm. now working within where semester in a department sections of world history each and I use standard textbooks forty sections are scheduled; of guidelines of chronology, extent conform to departmental what I propose is a assignments, and exams. So rc .di g, writing gender within the framework tic approach to incorporating 4 4 of world history as it is now conceived. Five years ago this was difficult, but the proliferation of new resources --both theoretical and empirical -- makes doing so easier each year. how I think about gender in planning courses -- considering it might fit with each topic, and about where the ordinary texts historical developments. or organization omit critical gendered syllabus Squeezing more explanatory factors into a world history So, it is is hard, and I can devote few classes only to gender. social meanings critical to establish early that discerning the This is theme. of male and female is one major historical in syllabus stated in my course description and reenforced topics. is a primary focus of In selecting required readings, gender Sarah Pomeroy's explicit, as in at least one book. It might be in Classical Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women Spence's The Death AntiquitNL, or embedded in a text like Jonathan learned to look at I find that students who have of Woman Wang. its patterns even in history in gendered ways find evidence of such as historical factors books chosen to illustrate other In designing written the Chinese Judge Dee mysteries. learned to leave open the assignments based on readings, I've analyze gender, or avoid selection of themes so that students may education in a required general It is particularly important it. students believe that to avoid making male or female criurs freshmen - hated word among Shippensburg -- a feared and f Gerda Lerner's Even when I assigned eing forced on them. 5 5 Creation of Patriarchy, suggested themes for papers included some gender-neutral topics. and In the classroom, I mention gender regularly in lectures World history has a tendency to omit actual people discussions. in favor of broad impersonal, but -- even most famous men -- I try to remind students that we implicitly masculine, forces. whose collective behavior is are talking about women and men Teach them to Seeing gender can become habitual. consequential. of people, not unlike look at television news shots as vignettes street themselves, and to see gender patterns when the male or when the demonstrators or soldiers are overwhelmingly the United Nations refugees are only women and children, as What we have seen this past estimates 70-80 percent today are. makes it easier to understand how year in Somalia and Bosnia North Africa so often led to warfare in the ancient Near East and time to Often it takes very little class enslavement of women. slavery, education, indicate the gender-specificity of war, Thorough analysis of migration, or citizenship in the state. possible in a survey, and masculinity and femininity is never than I like, but there is generalized types are more necessary using the words human, male and usually time to be accurate in female, as well as gendered pronouns. important, gender must Because students believe grades are and analysis testing. Questions of fact also be incorporated in multiple-choice items and essays. I appear regularly in my intersperse prior to essay exams, and distribute study questions 6 6 from gender topics among more traditional ones. Here are samples several semesters for the period 1300 to 1500 A.D.: in Were the ideals for women's behavior developed (1) 14th- classical Islamic societies practiced by the women of century Cairo? 5 unmarried If, in a previous life, you were a young, (2) ordinary wealth about 1400, would person born into a family of Southeast born in (a) Western Europe, (b) you choose to have been Explain your choice of Asia, or (c) Peruvian Inca society? and contrast daily life in gender and geography as you compare these places.6 of a typical Describe the character and lifestyle (3) How was he Where was he born? Italian Renaissance man. How did he spend his What were his values or beliefs? educated? time? intellectual history; These topics draw upon social or also important to the project economic and political history are of engendering world history. the division of labor, Few issues are as critical as gathering and hunting societies. beginning with prehistoric spend one deeply entrenched that I Student misconceptions are sc sustenance of of women's gathering to class on the importance participation in some hunting their families, on their the relative shared childcare, and on activLties, on patterns of societies. Gender find in later similar egual_ty anthropologists Anthropological published by the American : ;thr000lomt, and 7 7 Association, has useful essays and suggestions for class projects peoples.7 that range from primates to modern gathering-hunting The transition from foraging to agricultural societies may be What is important is included in this unit, or developed later. to stress that both women and men participated in producing vegetative and animal food. Human societies depended on into productive labor by most adults, but usually divided it A book that is comparative and useful in male and female tasks. Ester Boserup's its categorization of gendering in agriculture is As we encounter new Development.8 Woman's Role in Economic responsibilities can be regions and new crops, women's farming the As trade develops, who owns and has quickly introduced. needs to be right to market various agricultural products established when possible. discuss food processing Early in the first semester we also domestic work with Students tend to equate women's and cooking. they know -- that are what they know, with the spacious houses Before 1800, and clothes. full of appliances, furniture, linens sparsely-furnished spaces, had most women ard men lived in small, time producing rudimentary few clothes, and spent far more introduce early in the course the products for survival. I also tasks of hand variability of gender assignment of other potting, leather work, building manufacture: spinning, weaving, blacksmithing and metalwork to crnst,-uction; but the tendency for those that Slides are useful -- particularly -e by men. My building a house. frican men sitting at a loom or women 8 intention is to shake the students' received notions of "natural" gender patterns and to make them question relationships of work and power between the sexes in any historical society. In world history classes, I avoid several unanswerable One is the role of goddesses. issues of the prehistorical era. Another is the origin of patriarchy. I find Gerda Lerner's exploration of patriarchy's historic beginnings too narrow evidence because of its Western bias. Furthermore, historical oppression of does not suggest to me a single pattern of male Rather than negotiations of power. women, but much more complex trying to explain why or how men subjugated women, I demonstrate ancient how patriarchy was associated with the major India, and civilizations of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, China, life most often We discuss how the benefits of civilized Rome. class inequalities, and arose beside domination of women, Discussion of the explicit inequality of women and men slavery. religion, and government embedded in law, marriage, philosophy, Athens and China are is shocking to many of my students. only a little to the important examples both because one need add philosophies of Plato, facts in textbooks and because the conceptions of male and Aristotle and Confucius influenced In Athens, where the female for millenia in broad regions. the society, the intertwining conception of manhood is central to offers an opportunity to of gender, age, sexuality and power Whores, Sarah Pomeroy's Goddesses_ --;uce homosexuality. in both Greece and Rome. Within and Slaves discusses gender 9 9 the Mediterranean, Egyptian women had relatively high status, with more choices in marriage, work, and law than their Asian or Yet they were as likely to be slaves. European neighbors. serving Hatshepsut and Cleopatra had little in common with their of free women in dynastic women. Establishing the privileges Egyptian influence on Egypt sets a stage for showing significant Mediterranean and East women's rising status in the Hellenistic Africa.9 consternation and Sometime in the first semester student and universal depression mounts over women's seeming perpetual ThLs may appear among male students who are low status. leap There is a concomitant tendency to overwhelmed with guilt. everything was terrible until the to the false conclusion that So, it is important to American Revolution liberated women. in which women had high status. deal with societies besides Egypt Asia, based largely on readings I rely on a unit on Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce. Here, from Anthony Reid's Southeast competent than men in business, women were thought to be more satisfaction from and expected sexual were more often literate, female students is marred by The beauty of this picture for men. bodies, and blackened teeth, tattooed a preference for students may be horrified by androgynous dressing, while male enhance men's appeal to women. descriptions of genital surgery to Asia serves a further purpose Discussion of gender in Southeast Chinese influences. selectivity of Indian and of 12 ustrating the Borobudor cr Buddhist temples of Pagan, only looks at the II)