The History of Feminism Is Political History

Karen Offen, May 2011

Is "real solemn history" constituted of "the quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page...and hardly
any women at all," as Jane Austen once characterized it in her novel, Northanger Abbey?1 Two hundred years ago, that
succinct delineation of political history (and allusion to the absence of women from it) was tellingly true. Today,
notwithstanding a few skeptics, the answer to that question can be, "No longer only that."

Once viewed as "social history," and more recently studied through the lens of cultural history,
the history of feminism is, in fact, political history, or it is (to put it another way) a more expansive
history of politics that incorporates women and analyzes gender politics. It foregrounds women's
concerns, perspectives, and efforts to be recognized as integral members of their respective
societies. Feminist claims are primarily political claims for change in specific settings; they erupt
frequently in times of political unrest. Thus, the history of feminism is a gendered narrative of
political history that goes well beyond the adding and stirring in of an occasional queen, a
comment on "new woman" fashion, or a photograph of a demonstration for the right to vote. It
necessarily expands the very meaning of "political" and of what constitutes "politics."

Thanks to some 40 years of feminist historical scholarship, the "new" political history is truly
"universal" insofar as it can fully embrace the centrality to human societies of the relationships
between women and men, including the challenges to male authority in families along with the
long-entrenched "male breadwinner" syndromeall in a framework of developing nation-states
and transnational communities. It encompasses efforts to achieve wholesale reform of secular
and religious marriage laws, especially concerning women's access to property rights and the
possibility for divorce.

The history of feminism as political history necessarily embraces women's ongoing quests for
educational equity, economic opportunity, civil rights, and political inclusion. It also includes
controversies over women's claims to mobility, to control their own bodies andvery
importantlytheir fertility, and even their critiques of harmful patterns of male sexual behavior.
Historians of feminism have argued that, historically speaking, "the personal is political," a
slogan that authorizes the wholesale rethinking of the "old" history, including the history of
politics, and turns it inside out.

In this rethinking of "politics," historians of feminism highlight the struggle to rebalance the
equations of power between the sexes in many diverse human societies by reclaiming publicly
expressed criticism of male dominated gender relations as well as political organization and
action directed to achieving their goals. In the Western world, such a struggle began in tandem
with challenges to kingly rule, which almost immediately also provoked challenges to male
dominance in families. The struggle was engendered in the context of a heightened awareness of
relations between governors and governedthe "governed" in this case being women who were
then embedded in and constrained by male-dominated familial structures. The history of
feminism recaptures the gendered critique of the meanings and capaciousness (acquired over
centuries) of fundamental concepts in political theory such as democracy, representation,
nationality, and citizenship, a critique that gained momentum with the rise of print culture and
literacy. It incorporates the gendered critique of concepts such as "rights," "liberty," "equality,"
and "justice," all of which came to the fore during the formation of modern nation-states and
market economies. Women and a few important male feminist allies took up this language to
campaign for acknowledgement of women's rights within the societies in which they lived and
to claim their empowerment, their access to authority, and their inclusion in decisionmaking at
every level.

As in the "old" political history, the history of feminism as a "new" political history deals with
"real issues" in "real time." It is "objective" in its attention to dates, sequences of events, names,
places, and power struggles; but by interpreting the issues far more broadly and inclusively, it
changes our understanding of their significance, thus exposing the biases embedded in the
seemingly gender-blind earlier accounts. It also encompasses the history of antifeminism (that is,
both the covert and the articulated resistance to women's emancipation), with which it remains
in constant dialogue. It reexamines gender politics ranging from the realm of intimate personal
relations to international and transnational women's organizations and activism, to women's
opposition to war and their promotion of peace. In this scenario, gender is indeed "a useful
category of analysis" and does provide "a primary way of signifying relationships of power."2
But gender also specifically highlights the inequalities in the balance of power that have
historically characterized the relationships between women and men. This makes gender a
primary category of analysis, which allows us to throw the spotlight on the "sexual politics" (to
use Kate Millet's term) that lie at the heart of, and are inextricable from, human consciousness
and human sociopolitical organization.

Many historians now think of feminism's history as political history.3 In European history, for
example, new, integrated, and interdisciplinary narratives of the past have shown how a long
tradition of feminist thought and activism developed in constant dialogue with the older, more
established subjects of political and intellectual historyfrom the Enlightenment and the French
Revolution to the world wars and the breakup of empires.4

Without perceiving the history of feminism as part and parcel of political history, none of us,
whether we are researchers, students, or general readers, would realize that from the very
beginning of the French Revolution, feminists had challenged the claims made for the
"universality" of the Rights of "Man," that far from evicting women from "politics" into a strictly
"private" or "domestic" sphere in 1793, the French revolutionaries actually mandated a new,
quasipublic role for women as mother-educators of new generations of citizens, which in other
settings became that of "promulgators of a national mother-tongue." We could overlook the fact
that 19th-century progressives of both sexes, and in virtually every aspiring nation, considered
this new role to be the "key to the construction of successful self-governing societies."5 We might
miss the parallel development of and relationships between the mixed-sex campaigns to end black
slavery, to emancipate women, to combat government-regulated prostitution, and to end the
traffic in women and children, as well as the close though troubled links to the development of
socialism and working-class politics (that is, to questions of race and class). We could
misunderstand the differential impact on women of laws against association and laws curbing
freedom of the press and the imbrication of feminist initiatives with experiments in societal
reorganization, as well as efforts to maintain social order and control. We will certainly miss the
significance of the Swedish feminist Ellen Key's prediction in 1904, "The struggle that woman
is now carrying on is far more far-reaching than any other; and if no diversion occurs, it will
finally surpass in fanaticism any war of religion or race."6

Finally, we would remain oblivious of the fact that a unifying proposition for fascists of all stripes
(Italian, German, Spanish, and so on) in their opposition to the dramatic experiment in altering
the sociopolitical relations of the sexes, was their leadership's fundamental conviction that
women should not participate in governmental affairs, except insofar as these exclusively
concerned other women; population growth came first. Thus, the "women question" was at the
center of state-building concerns, and political figures from Talleyrand and Napoleon to
Mussolini and Hitler disagreed fundamentally with the demands of feminists (men and women
alike) and did everything in their power to smother their campaigns.

Nowadays feminist historians are writing accounts of the history of feminism in virtually every
organized society around the globe.7 These accounts demonstrate that the history of feminism is
a wholly gendered political history entangled with network formation (both religious and
secular), state-building, national aspirations, and the communications and transportation
revolutions of modern times. In these accounts, too, emancipatory changes in the status of women
(legal, educational, economic, cultural) are recognized as a prerequisite for building strong
nation-states. They likewise demonstrate how feminist women (and men) begin to organize
transnationally to bring pressure on nation-states and religious institutions to develop more
woman-friendly practices.

Examples include Nancy Hewitt's re-reading of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention for women's
rights not only in the context of national politics in the United States, but also with an eye to the
concurrent European revolutions; Rochelle Ruthchild's radically revisionist account of the
Russian Revolution of 1917 that restores feminist activism to the center; Susan Zimmermann's
problematizing of efforts by international feminist organizations to establish "national" groups
within the multinational, multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire; Marilyn Boxer's analysis of the
historically problematic notion of "bourgeois feminism" promoted by socialists during the
Second International, and its adverse political consequences not only for feminism and socialism,
but for historiography itself; Anne Summers' account of the international campaigns against the
sexual double-standard; the revisionist accounts by Barbara Molony and Louise Edwards of
feminist agitation for women's suffrage in Japan and in China; Ellen Carol DuBois's analysis of
the international feminist organizations' campaigns to pressure the League of Nations on married
women's nationality laws; Angela Woollacott's comparative look at the development of
Commonwealth and Pan-Pacific feminist organizations; and Ellen Fleischmann's magisterial
survey of the development of women's movements in four emerging Middle Eastern societies as
the Ottoman Empire disintegrated. All these essays contribute to an expanded, "new" and more
capacious political history, as do a flurry of theme issues of journals and edited books (see the
sidebar for a short list of these).

The sources for studying the history of feminism are abundant and growing. Libraries and
archives around the world have yieldedand are still yieldingtremendous treasures, both
manuscript and printed materials, to document the intricate connection between feminist
campaigns and political history. The story is different, though, in every country. In Europe,
archives carted off by the Nazis and subsequently by the Russians during the 1940s are being
repatriated to their countries of origin, and researchers are finding rich material in these recovered
records. Old repositories too are proving to be treasure troves. The League of Nations archives
in Geneva, for example, is yielding considerable new material about international feminist
campaigns.

What are the challenges in this regard that history teachers encounter, both at the secondary and
collegiate levels? Teachers at all levels inevitably face problems of selectivitywhat to
incorporate and what to leave out when teaching any course. We need to encourage them (and
ourselves too, for that matter), therefore, to accommodate the "new," integrated, and exciting
dimension of political history. Both girls and boys, both young women and young men should
have access to this expanded knowledge base.

As for the current state and future prospects for the field of political history, it seems clear that
the number of researchers interested in the history of feminism as integral to a "new" expanded
political history is growing every year, and not solely in the United States.8 That women's rights
are human rights is now a well-established truth. International women's organizations and their
political interventions at the League of Nations and, since 1945, at the United Nations, provide a
whole new area of transnational historical research on the history of feminisms that cries out for
incorporation into an expanded notion of a "political" world history.9

Karen Offen, a historian who received her PhD from Stanford University, is an independent
scholar affiliated as a senior scholar with the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research
at Stanford University. She has published extensively on the history of modern Europe, with
particular reference to women's history.

Notes
1. Northanger Abbey, 1803, chap. 14.

2. In Joan W. Scott's important article in the American Historical Review (December 1986, pages
10531075); republished in her book, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988).
3. While many have articulated the idea, I like to think that I was among the first to do so, in the
following articles: with Susan Groag Bell, in the introduction to Women, the Family, and
Freedom (1983); in my article "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Sicle
France," in the American Historical Review (1984); and in my essay on 19th-century feminism
in the second edition of Renate Bridenthal, et al. ed., Becoming Visible: Women in European
History (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987).

4. See, for example, my own book, European Feminisms 17001950: A Political History
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), in which gender politics informs and is integrated
into a new account of European history.

5. Karen Offen, European Feminisms, preface, xiv.

6. Ellen Key, Love and Marriage, transl. Arthur G. Chater (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1911), p. 214; originally published in Swedish as Lifslinjer af Ellen Key, 1904.

7. See, for example, the 20 pathbreaking, comparative studies in Globalizing Feminisms 1789
1945, ed. Karen Offen (London: Routledge, 2010). This book, intended for classroom use, also
contains a detailed chronology on international feminism and an extensive supplemental
bibliography.

8. Scholars are making similar claims for the necessity of incorporating women's political
theorizing and feminist arguments into the history of political theory and intellectual history. See,
for example, Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Siep Stuurman, Franois Poulain de la
Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004);
and Women, Gender and Enlightenment, ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (Houndmills,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), the expressed purpose of which is to bring together
scholarship on the history of feminism and that of the Enlightenment. Also, on one leading
feminist political theorist, Virginia Sapiro, A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory
of Mary Wollstonecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Another example is Ann
Taylor Allen's Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 18901970: The Maternal
Dilemma (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

9. One has only to look at the newsletters and programs for the conferences of the International
Federation for Research in Women's History (www.ifrwh.com ) to be impressed by the
growth in such topics as well as the increasing number of publications in various languages by
scholars of both sexes.
The History of Feminism

A short list of thematic issues and anthologies

Allen, Ann Taylor, Anne Cova, & June Purvis, eds. Special issue: "International Feminisms,"
Women's History Review, 19:4 (September 2010).

Blom, Ida, Karen Hagemann, & Catherine Hall, eds. Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and
Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Berg, 2000.

Cano, Gabriela. "Revolucin, feminismo y ciudadana en Mxico (19151940," in Historia de

las mujeres en Occidente, ed. Georges Duby y Michelle Perrot (Madrid: Taurus, 1993), vol. 10.

DuBois, Ellen Carol, & Katie Oliviero, eds. Special issue: "Circling the Globe: International
Feminism Reconsidered, 1920 to 1975," Women's Studies International Forum, 32, no. 1 (Jan.-
Feb. 2009).

Faur, Christine, ed. Political and Historical Encyclopedia of Women. New York & London:
Routledge, 2003.

Gubin, liane, Catherine Jacques, Florence Rochefort, Brigitte Studer, Franoise Thbaud,
Michelle Zancarini-Fournel, eds. Le Sicle des fminismes. Paris: Les ditions de l'Atelier, 2004.

Haan, Francisca de, et al., eds. Special issue: "Women's Movements and Feminisms," Aspasia:
International Handbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender
History, vol. 1 (2007);
Hagemann, Karen, Sonya Michel, & Gunilla Budde, eds. Civil Society and Gender Justice:
Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Berghahn, 2008).

Hewitt, Nancy A., ed. 2010. No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

Offen, Karen, ed. Globalizing Feminisms 17891945 (London: Routledge, 2010).

Paletschek, Sylvia, & Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, "Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe
in the Long Nineteenth Century: Conclusions," in Women's Emancipation Movements in the 19th
Century, ed. Paletschek & Pietrow-Ennker (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

Saurer, Edith, Margareth Lanzinger, Elisabeth Frysak, eds. Women's Movements: Networks and
Debates in Post-communist Countries in the 19th and 20th Centuries. L'Homme, Schriften 13.
(Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Bhlau Verlag, 2006).
Schck-Quinteros, Eva, Anja Schler, Annika Wilmers, Kerstin Wolff, eds. Politische
Netzwerkerinnen: Internationale Zusammenarbeit von Frauen 18301960, vol 10 in Schriften
des Hedwig Hintze-Instituts Bremen (Berlin, Trafo Verlag, 2007).