Historiographical trends from the 1960s onwards and how it affected Essay

Historiographical trends from the 1960s onwards and how it affected the ways in which historians write about women in the past - Essay Example In America, during the reconstruction era, a lot of rights were violated including women's segregation. However, feminism movement was not due to the suffrage only, women's image to the society as mothers, daughters and wives were challenged by women activists. "Gender conflict was as deeper as ever both before and after World War I, and the vote finally granted in 1918, proved a weak tool for a change" (Copelman, 1990). Women suffragists sparked the fire for the feminism movements around the world, with feminism movement expanding into other areas in women liberations. A lot have been documented in various historical journals women's struggle; this history representation has helped a lot in shaping the contemporary history and making historians have critical look at how women were represented in past in history writings. Historiography of women's history has played a vital role in shaping women's history or new history with historians arguing for new historical analysis on how gender has constituted to the social changes and relationships. For Dina Copelman in reviewing article 'Liberal Ideology, Sexuality difference and the Lives of Women: Recent Works in British History' in Edwardian and Victorian political life, there had been complex role of women which could have hard time with liberal natural rights tradition and theories of sexual difference. The study according to Copelman, allows historians to see the relative value of different modes of interpretation in the historical analysis of women and gender. Nevertheless, a lot have been written about women involvement and how women started themselves writing books, biographies, poems and ballads to mention a few. More and more have been written but most historians especially women historians have given detailed account of women presentations or involvement in history and how they had been presented by previous historians. "The history of historiography made remarkable presentation how historians portrayed women in the history writings, she pointed out that women were presented as wives, daughters and mothers and being denied participations in other areas as politics, economic activities and leadership positions." (Copelman, 1990). Like Copelman, other historians reviewed women presentations in history writings with the emergence of gender and feminism movements which picked up in 1960s. Historians in searching of women participations in various activities discovered that very little was written about women as many historians in that time were men, whose focus were on masculinity. "Women were ignored in history writing due to the fact that male historians decided what was historically significant to be written and what wasn't, with war, and politics being in their top lists and ignoring that fact family, social relationships and marriage mattered, the area where women were much involved in, hence being left out of male historian writings." (Millions, European Women and Historical Writing 1400-1800). Many male historians portrayed women as objects in their writings and not as subjects, the inclination which has largely