Gender history

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The gender history is a discipline of historical science that deals with the historical occurrence and variability of femininity , masculinity and the ratio of the sexes is concerned with each other. In particular, the question of how cultural gender roles have shaped the way people think, feel and act.

Thus, gender history deals in principle with all sub-areas of historical science and is not defined via a subject area (such as the history of the military , sport, the labor movement ). Instead, it represents a more specific approach in which the “gender” category plays a central role.

Based on a women's and gender history that has expanded male-dominated and often androcentric historiography to include female perspectives and questions about the historical significance of women in human history , a “men's story ” has developed over the last few decades. She tries not to regard the behavior of men as the “normal case” but as gender-specific (see also men's research ).

The beginnings since the 1960s

Women have long been neglected in history . Only individual female personalities were considered worth mentioning in historiography well into the 20th century. The beginnings of a women's story, which tries to move women as actors in history more into the focus of historical studies, lie in Germany in the 1960s. Central to the discussion about a new perspective in history was the distinction between sex and gender , i.e. between biological and cultural gender. Suggestions for this came from the environment of the women's movement and women's studies in the USA, i.e. from outside the established historical studies (cf. Frauenforschung , Gender Studies ). In the following years, the focus of historical women's research was on "making women visible" and various anthologies (including the large-scale history of women ) helped to close the gaps in the field of empirical studies. Annette Kuhn held the first chair with a focus on history didactics and women's history in Bonn.

More recent developments since around 1990

The boom in historical women's research also had a downside. Women's history had established itself as a branch of historical studies at the end of the 1980s; Instead of a paradigm shift that affects the whole of history, however, in addition to social , economic or cultural history, for example , another area, women's history, has de facto emerged. The gender category is central to almost every historical sub-area. A discussion about the need to replace a narrowly understood women's story with a gender story that examines both femininity and masculinity was then initiated by historians such as Gisela Bock , Ute Frevert and Bea Lundt .

Further suggestions in this direction came from the English-language masculinity research, especially from Raewyn Connell . There are now numerous publications on gender history that also examine masculinity (s), and gender research in the sociology of religion (especially Paul Zulehner ). There are currently chairs for gender history in Germany at the universities of Jena, Bielefeld , Bochum and the HU and FU Berlin . In the meantime, under the influence of gender history, further new directions of research have emerged, such as New Political History , which tries to modernize classical political history using gender, social and everyday historical approaches, or New Military History as a variant of the history of masculinity .

See also

literature

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