Talk:Women's history

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2021 and 9 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HaleyHam.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation?
I have removed the bolded part of the first sentence of this article:

Women's history is a term that refers to information about the past in regard to the female human being, in contrast to a history from a feminist perspective (called Herstory).

Considering that feminism is a broad movement, one could claim that women's history is history from a feminist perspective. The bolded text that I removed might have been intended to discredit feminism by emphasing extremist feminists. --Kernigh 01:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I know there is a Herstory page, but I think Women's History is far more common for name of the field. Would anyone mind a disambiguation between the field and the subject itself? -- TheMightyQuill 09:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Women's History in other countries
Please see El Jigue 1/19/06
 * This topic should be expanded upon, for example, from 618-907 CE, Empress Wu Zeitan of the Tang Dynasty, was the first empress in Chinese history. This fact is important because this is the first and only time that a female has ruled China. Especially so early in history, this was a marker of equality between men and women, as many Chinese societies were more equal than what they are in, say America, today. --Jenna Deutch (talk) 03:03, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

women's history?
Shouldn't the article on women's history dicussus th,ke logistics of women's history.. prominent women's historians, popular research topics, and that sort of thing rather than lising the history of women? The article on History isn't just a list of every universal historical event that ever happened. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 164.156.66.47 (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC).
 * Good question. The title of this article is a little confusing. As it says at the top of the article This article is about the history of women. For information on the field of historical study, see Gender history. - TheMightyQuill 08:30, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I must respectfully disagree. Speaking as a graduate student in history, I assure you that the field of Women's History is not the same as "gender history" (which isn't an accepted field everywhere). The field of women's history has a tradition and a body of scholars who identify themselves as women's historians. In fact, the American History Association offers a prize every year called the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for Women's History (not gender history).

On another issue, the idea of "herstory" is appropriate to leave in. It is not an "extreme" idea at all. The whole field was created by feminists anyway, and I think we do them a disservice and we distort reality by trying somehow to minimize their influence. In short, it is not historically accurate! :-) Graceful1 06:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Also speaking as a graduate student in history, I agree that Women's History is not the same as Gender History but insist there is a world outside academia in which "Women's History" the field (which now seems to be using the article Herstory) is hard to separate from the actual history of women. See World History vs History of the world for another example. In fact, when I created Gender History, I described it as an outgrowth of Women's History the field. If, however, you want to move this article to the history of women and rename Herstory to Women's History, I'd support it. Finally, whether or not "herstory" is an extreme idea really depends on your point of view. - TheMightyQuill 19:36, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

The Women's History article really should be about the rise of the field of women's history. It grew out of the contemporary women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and it was developed by men and women who felt that there needed to be changes in the way history was written, in terms of periodization, social theory, etc. This is why "women's history" is not simply the history of female human beings. Politics were tied up in its creation from the very start. This is not an "extreme" point of view, but indeed a fact that can be verified through many primary sources (such as the oral history project on women's historians which will be made available at Smith College in 2008), and in secondary sources about the rise and development of the field of women's history (which I can list here later.) "Gender history" came about much later with the publication of Joan W. Scott's article "Gender as a useful tool for historical analysis" in 1987 or 1988.

I think we need to be careful about presuming to know what is or isn't an extreme point of view.

Graceful1 (talk) 23:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Women and religion
I think Women as theological figures covers part of the topic: and certain aspects could be developed cojointly. Jackiespeel (talk) 14:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Strongly Disagree
There are actually many ideas within this article that I disagree with. I apologize for the length of my post but as a Women's Historian, I feel that this article is neither historically or grammatically correct.

"From women's involvement within the abolition movements, women became aware of male dominance and oppression"

Women have been aware, and working against male dominance and oppression long before the abolition movement. Christine De Pizan, Elizabeth I, Nefertiti, Hapshepsut, are just a few prominent woman in history who were writing and speaking about these issues hundreds, even thousands of years ago.

"From then on women struggled for equality (abolition)"

Again, women have been "struggling" for equality long before abolition.

"The advent of the reformist age during the 19th century meant that those invisible minorities or marginalized majorities were to find a catalyst and a microcosm in such new tendencies of reform."

this sentence is non-sensical. I do not believe that "microcosm" is the intended term.

"The trigger for the revolution was the development of the birth control pill in 1960, which gave women access to easy and reliable contraception."

While the author has the right idea, no contemporary feminists would consider the birth control pill as an "easy and reliable" form contraception.

"They made up one-third of factory “operatives,” to be sure, but teaching and the more gentle occupations of dressmaking, millinery, and tailoring played a larger role."

This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Also, using the term "gentle" to describe historically gendered occupations is not beneficial to an accurate discourse of women's history. In fact, it is actually quite dismissive.

"Two-thirds of teachers were women. And they could be found in such unexpected places as..."

More grammatical errors. the author implies that teachers could be found in unexpected places. Also, the use of the word "unexpected" denotes that the reader should be surprised that women could be found in such unlikely locations —Preceding unsigned comment added by FilthyLilith (talk • contribs)

This article is absolute nonsense and should be deleted
This article is a good example of why wikipedia is insalvagable. Poorly written with no real scholarly background, its based on American sources and historiography too. Pathetic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.40.211.212 (talk) 23:31, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). -- Mwanner | Talk 23:54, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

What a pile of meaningless nonsense. Embaressing. 134.226.1.234 (talk) 16:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes agreed TheRightofHerWay (talk) 15:18, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Needs overwriting by someone qualified
I think critical persons should not hesitate to substantially alter this article as its extremely naive and uninformative. Just go ahead and do it. For a start I agree with the comment above 'The Women's History article really should be about the rise of the field of women's history'. I myself lack basic information to do this. eg Does anyone know when the term first started to be used (I mean other than that in the absence of other info I would assume as part of 'second wave feminism' but wondering if the first wave feminists were also interested in this area). Or at least if there is anything like a Women's history conference, associations, journals, courses named this, academics who state this as their field etc. If so, chuck it in here and delete other stuff. Also, cover any opposition to the term. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucy1958 (talk • contribs) 03:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed TheRightofHerWay (talk) 15:18, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Why isnt there a "Mens history"?
just curios greets--Lexikon-Duff (talk) 02:51, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a men's history. It's called "His" Story. --Henriettapussycat (talk) 21:39, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
 * If that's a serious question, Lexikon-Duff, I'm happy to try to answer it, or at least point you to some readings. And actually, over the last decade or two, there have been scholars who specialize in "masculinity studies," and what historically made a man a man, and "men's history." Cynwolfe (talk) 21:43, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

History of women in science
Where would be a good spot to link History of women in science to this article? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 14:07, 28 October 2015 (UTC)please ping me
 * I recommend a new section 2.7 after 2.6 Religion. Rjensen (talk) 14:36, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

History of women in sports
...and how about History of women in sports? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Revising Middle East section (with historiography info)
Hi, I am interested in adding to/elaborating on the Middle East section. I'm planning on taking a mostly historiographical approach. Please let me know if you have ideas, opinions, or sources! Also, Happy International Women's Day. MBJAnderson (talk) 09:22, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Great job -- the Middle East section of the article was expanded with a lot of important and relevant information that was well-cited! The focus on the historical portrayal of the region was a much-needed addition. I would suggest greatly expanding the Modern Middle East section and Perceptions of Islam section, as well as further discussing the work of Meriwether and perhaps other similar authors. In addition, I think that the most important improvement would be adding more recent sources and the changes in the field that have accompanied those sources. Jkolli (talk) 18:52, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Great job! Expanding the Middle East section of Women’s History is an important area to build on. I appreciated how all keywords and concepts were either linked to another article or were defined in your sections. Coming from someone who has not read much on women in the Middle East, I found your sections to be easy to follow. I would love to learn more about perceptions of Islam and what impacts those views have on the women or on other countries/ influences. It would also be great to have more links from other articles to your page (maybe some articles that are centered on the Middle East) and more photos to illustrate your ideas. Keep up the great work! I think the most important thing would just be to continue building on your existing sections and adding more information, links, and photos. Heatherkong (talk) 19:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Evolution of women in Indian history
Voice 2402:8100:2577:73A3:411B:49EF:9436:DCA3 (talk) 11:09, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

There is too much typogra
Too much typo

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