Twenty-one years ago, when my daughter Hannah was born, there were few books for children whose central characters were female. From Lowly Worm to The Runaway Bunny, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Paddington Bear, the protagonists were males. As Hannah began that  astonishing process of cataloguing the world—identifying everything from “doctors” to “car” and “broom” through their pictures in books, the world she saw was decidedly gendered. Males waved from car windows, smiling and apparently contented; women pushed brooms; and the doctors were always men.

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Gender Issues in Social Studies
BY DR . CAROL BERKIN

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Twenty-one years ago, when my daughter Hannah was born, there were few books for children whose central characters were female. From Lowly Worm to The Runaway Bunny, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Paddington Bear, the protagonists were males. As Hannah began that  astonishing process of cataloguing the world—identifying everything from “doctors” to “car” and “broom” through their pictures in books, the world she saw was decidedly gendered. Males waved from car windows, smiling and apparently contented; women pushed brooms; and the doctors were always men.

As a teacher, I was accustomed to “making do” with the materials at hand. So, when I read stories to my daughter, I pulled the great  ronoun train robbery, substituting she for he and thus re-gendering pigs and cats and even worms, who, after all, were innocently free of any sexually identifying markers. When scenes reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes appeared in stories, I embellished: “It’s the mother’s turn to do the dishes tonight; tomorrow night, the father will do them.” Imagine Hannah’s surprise and shock and disillusionment, when in later years she was able to read her favorite books on her own. Much-loved stories and characters became suddenly alien. She was horrified to discover that the bunny in Good Night Moon was not, after all, a girl like herself. Even worse, she could find no evidence in her large library of bedtime stories that dishes were ever washed by dads or that women ever wielded stethoscopes. When she began to study history in elementary school, the problem only deepened. In fact as in fiction, it seemed that men were the actors on life’s stage and women were only the silent audience. I could read the question in her eyes: Where is my face in the mirror of history?

Today, happily, Hannah’s question has begun to be answered in our textbooks and in other classroom material. In part, this is due to the explosion of research and writing over the past three decades in the field of women’s history. Scholars have restored to the historical record thousands of women from our national past. Women’s contributions to virtually every facet of American life—from medicine to politics to business to sports to religious leadership—are now matters of record. These women speak to us through the diaries, letters, speeches, books, poems, songs, structures, inventions, and human legacies they have left behind and that we have found, analyzed, and shared with others. Gone are the days when historians could shake their heads and say they would love to include women in their books if only they had any sources to quote. This effort to make history a mirror in which to discover women’s past as well as men’s has also been mounted by educators across the country and by the authors and publishers of texts. Together, I believe that scholars and educators have made a commitment to give an account of the past that is richer, more complex, and portrays both women and men as active agents in shaping the society around them.

As a teacher, I was accustomed to “making do” with the materials at hand. So, when I read stories to my daughter, I pulled the great pronoun train robbery, substituting she for he and thus re-gendering pigs and cats and even worms . . . .

Accomplishing this on a day-to-day basis in the classroom is easier said than done, I realize. But let me offer a few suggestions on how to move women onto the stage of history without distorting what we know to be true of the past. First, a teacher does not have to stand history on its head. George Washington was not a woman and neither were any of the great orators who rose in the colonial assemblies to protest or defend British policy before the Revolution. The soldiers at Valley Forge were young men and boys. Women did not negotiate the peace treaty. But do these facts mean that we can explain the colonies’ victory in the War for Independence without ever mentioning women? 

Scholars have restored to the historical record thousands of women from our national past. Women’s contributions to virtually every facet of American life—from medicine to politics to business to sports to religious leadership—are now matters of record.

Emphatically not. Those colonial orators may have moved their audiences to cheers or jeers, but it was the boycott of British manufactured and imported goods that actually persuaded Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. And, whose support did the boycott depend upon? Housewives—the women who publically renounced the most popular drink of the day, tea; the women who picketed in front of shops that ignored or broke the ban on selling British goods. Without women’s cooperation and their active efforts to ensure enforcement of the boycotts, American history might be dramatically different. And, true, the soldiers at Valley Forge were men and boys, but the nurses, cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses that kept the army alive during that dreadful winter were women. Without women providing quartermaster services, nursing skills, and all manner of domestic chores, Washington’s men probably would not have survived. Women did not sit at the negotiating table after the war, but women did manage the farms and keep the shops and businesses running through the eight years of war so that there was something to come home to when peace was finally a reality. If we stop to look, we can see that women filled the landscape of the revolutionary effort: they were spies and saboteurs, they lent money to local governments, and often they took up arms even if they were not officially in the military. Molly Pitcher was not just a loyal wife; the hundreds of “Molly Pitchers” in American-held forts were women who carried water to cool down the cannons in the midst of battle and who took up their husbands’ posts beside those cannons when the men were killed or injured. Women like Margaret Corbin, wounded and captured in one of these battles, were veterans even if they were not formally commissioned in the army. Students have often been told that the Revolution was a “home front war.” This historical truth takes on new, important dimensions when the roles of women are added to the story that we tell.

We don’t have to stand history on its head to place women squarely in the flow of events.

Secondly, we can trace the impact of major events on the lives of everyday citizens through women’s experiences as effectively as we can through men’s. Do you want to convey to your students the impact of World War II on the depression-burdened American economy? An account of how women found work in the shipyards of the Pacific Northwest will illustrate wartime full employment. Do you want to talk about medical breakthroughs and discoveries? The impact of sulfur and other drugs on women’s and children’s mortality rates is a dramatic example of science changing the face of society. Are you doing a class on westward migration? There are scores of diaries by women that provide vivid descriptions of life on the overland trail. In other words, at that point in the lesson when you say, “for example,” that example can usually include women’s lives.

We don’t have to stand history on its head to place women squarely in the flow of events. But have we made some women more invisible as we shine the spotlight on others? One of the most important developments in the scholarship of women in recent years came about because we asked ourselves that question. In our earlier work, we made the mistake of assuming that white, middle-class, urban women’s experiences and attitudes could represent the experiences and attitudes of women in general. Today, scholars realize that gender is cross cut by race, region, social class, age, and religion—by scores of factors that shape a person’s identity. The experiences of African American women in the antebellum South were vastly different from that of Anglo American plantation mistresses; the work roles assumed to be “natural” for white colonial women were the opposite of those considered natural for an Iroquois woman living nearby. Today we recognize that women’s history more closely resembles a crazy quilt than a single seamless piece of cloth. In our teaching and writing, we have to make certain that the variety of women is not lost in the generalized “woman.” This is one way we can break down stereotypes—by reminding our students of the infinite range of possibilities within human society.

Today we recognize that women’s history more closely resembles a crazy quilt than a single seamless piece of cloth. In our teaching and writing, we have to make certain that the variety of women is not lost in the generalized “woman.”

The question is frequently asked: How do we get students interested in history? The answer lies, in part, in our efforts to make that history as inclusive as possible, to make certain that the Clio, the muse of History, inspires her daughters as well as her sons to explore their past as they consider their future.