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Merry
Wiesner-Hanks' second edition of Gender
in History: Global Perspectives does not disappoint the reader expecting an
overview of women's history. This wonderful little volume packs an impressive amount
of research into its 227 pages. Wiesner-Hanks' text seeks to explore patterns
and trends in women's history within a global structure. At first glance, this monumental
task seems almost overwhelming, but Wiesner-Hanks successfully
applies her extensive knowledge and investigative skills to create a book that
appeals to undergraduate students taking their first world history course as
well as those enrolled in specialized women's history classes. For teachers of
Advanced Placement courses in high school settings, this text makes excellent addition
to an ancillary reading list for students who too often receive a seriously
abbreviated version of women's roles in world history.
In
the introductory pages, Wiesner-Hanks reviews some of the recent scholarship on
current definitions and ideas of gender. She argues that in the past historians
have interpreted the word in political terms since the modern field of women's
history originated in the widespread social movements of the 1970s. However,
Wiesner-Hanks argues that the term gender can no longer represent just the biological
differences between the sexes, but must also encompass concepts involving
transgender, gay, and lesbian people. This acknowledgement of new ways to
define old words makes the reader aware of the differing viewpoints of what it
means to be classified as a member of a particular sex. By carefully selecting
the word gender for use in the book's title, Wiesner-Hanks focuses on what it
means to be defined as female in various world cultures and across time
periods.
Wiesner-Hanks
notes in the introduction that she carefully considered the best framework to
organize her writing. Even though the book's title alludes to a geographical
arrangement, Wiesner-Hanks opted to use an overall thematic approach and
divided the chapters into topics such as religion, family, education,
economics, and politics. Advanced Placement teachers will notice the similarity
to familiar classroom analytical tools that help instruct high school students
in comprehending primary source documents, thereby increasing the usefulness of
this book in those venues. In a work of this scope, organizing the information into
units that are systematic, comprehensible, and interesting becomes quite
challenging. Wiesner-Hanks rises to the occasion admirably by combining
chronological change-over-time periodization with larger geographical patterns
in some chapters. For instance, the family life section begins by analyzing
women's roles within Egypt and Mesopotamia from 4000 BCE to 600 BCE and
concludes with a discussion of the modern post-Industrial Revolution world.
Other parts, like the essay on education subdivide the material into specific
historical periods such as the classical period, the Renaissance, and
modernity. This particular arrangement serves the purpose of this chapter well,
but the material does seem to emphasize Western viewpoints more than the scanty
examination of women's education in Asia or Africa.
Within
the chapter on family life, Wiesner-Hanks describes women's roles inside the
family structure. She suggests that defining family often entailed involving complicated
kin-group networks and extended families made more complex with adoption,
divorce, multiple wives, and remarriage particularly in the case of widowhood. Marriage,
Wiesner-Hanks argues, also meant careful arrangements along racial lines especially
in the colonial world. Latin America experienced both religious and racial
ideologies that shaped social understanding of women's status. According to
Wiesner-Hanks, church and colonial powers recognized over forty different
castes each with its own specific identification requirements. Mixed ancestry and
a high illegitimate birthrate further entangled family ties making marriage and
inheritance an intricate business. Wiesner-Hanks states that similarly
elaborate racial identity schemes developed elsewhere in the colonial world. However,
unlike those relationships in Latin America significantly fewer numbers of
mixed marriages took place in North America due to an increased prevalence of
miscegenation laws. Regardless of the motivation behind restrictive regulations—most
often religious or racial fears—women who became involved in such
relationships (voluntarily or not) suffered more often from direct and negative
legal ramifications and social ostracism than men throughout most societies.
Each
chapter in this book illustrates common themes found in women's lives in world
history. For the undergraduate enrolled in a world civilizations survey course
or the student looking for a place to begin researching women's history,
Wiesner-Hanks' clear and concise writing offers a succinct summary of the major
ideas found in more wieldy texts. Instead of providing the usual litany of
footnotes or a lengthy bibliographic listing at the end of the book,
Wiesner-Hanks supplies a well-researched reading list at the end of each
chapter. The entries represent a variety of classic works on women's history as
well as more recent, cutting-edge scholarship thereby providing a well-rounded
viewpoint for the researcher. As a result of such careful attention to
research, Wiesner-Hanks' work deserves a place on bookshelves of historians of
both world and gender history.
Marjorie Hunter earned her PhD in Heritage Studies from
Arkansas State University. She teaches AP World History at West Memphis High
School in West Memphis, Arkansas. She instructs World History courses at
Arkansas State University as adjunct faculty and can be contacted at mjlchunter@msn.com |
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