Why did historians turn from 'women's history' to 'gender history'?

Recovering women's experiences remained vital, but scholars such as Joan Scott argued that analysing gender—the social organization of difference between the sexes—reveals how power operates and shapes the lives of both women and men. Gender history thus broadened the analytical scope while building on women's history.

What did Joan Kelly-Gadol mean by asking 'Did women have a Renaissance?'

Kelly-Gadol questioned whether the Renaissance, conventionally seen as an era of progress, was experienced as such by women. She argued that in some respects women's autonomy narrowed during this period, showing that standard historical periodizations can look very different when viewed through the lens of gender.

Women's History and Gender Relations

This topic studies the historical experiences of women and the changing relations between the sexes, recovering women's lives and analysing gender as a structuring force in past societies.

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Definition

The historical study of women's experiences and of gender relations, including how gender is constructed and how it structures social, economic, and political life.

Scope

This topic covers the recovery of women's experiences across history and the analysis of gender as a category that organizes social, economic, and political relations. It examines women's work, family roles, and political activity; the construction of femininity and masculinity; and the ways gender intersects with class, race, and power. It traces the development of the field from the recovery of women 'hidden from history' to the analytical turn toward gender as a relational and discursive category. The treatment is descriptive and interpretive.

Core questions

How can the experiences of women, often absent from records, be recovered?
How has gender structured social, economic, and political relations?
How were ideas of femininity and masculinity historically constructed?
How does gender intersect with class, race, and other axes of difference?

Key theories

Gender as a category of analysis: Scott's influential argument that gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power and a fundamental analytical category, shifting the field from recovering women toward analysing the construction of sexual difference.
Periodization from a gendered perspective: Kelly-Gadol's challenge, asking whether women experienced the Renaissance as progress, which showed that standard historical periodizations may not apply to women and can even reverse for them.
Recovering women hidden from history: The early women's-history project, exemplified by Rowbotham, of documenting women's labour, oppression, and resistance that traditional histories had ignored.

History

Women's history emerged as a distinct field with the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s, initially focused on recovering women's experiences and contributions, as in Sheila Rowbotham's work, and on questioning standard periodizations, as in Joan Kelly-Gadol's essay. In the 1980s, the field was reoriented by the turn to gender history, crystallized in Joan Scott's call to treat gender as an analytical category, while microhistorians such as Natalie Zemon Davis illuminated women's lives in rich detail.

Debates

Women's history versus gender history: Scholars have debated whether the field should center on recovering women's experiences or analyse gender as a relational system shaping both sexes, with Scott's intervention shifting emphasis toward the latter while some warned against losing sight of women themselves.

Key figures

Joan Wallach Scott
Natalie Zemon Davis
Joan Kelly-Gadol
Sheila Rowbotham

Seminal works

rowbotham1973
kelly1977
scott1986
davis1975

Frequently asked questions

Why did historians turn from 'women's history' to 'gender history'?: Recovering women's experiences remained vital, but scholars such as Joan Scott argued that analysing gender—the social organization of difference between the sexes—reveals how power operates and shapes the lives of both women and men. Gender history thus broadened the analytical scope while building on women's history.
What did Joan Kelly-Gadol mean by asking 'Did women have a Renaissance?': Kelly-Gadol questioned whether the Renaissance, conventionally seen as an era of progress, was experienced as such by women. She argued that in some respects women's autonomy narrowed during this period, showing that standard historical periodizations can look very different when viewed through the lens of gender.