Why does gender matter?

It seems that me that there are two reasons why gender matters: one general and one more specific. The general idea is that, because half of humanity is female and because the male half of the species has traditionally wielded significant power over the other half, a fairer and truer accounting of the past in history requires an approach that takes gender into account. This point, to me, seems self-evident in the same way that white supremacy has traditionally eclipsed the narratives of non-white peoples and, therefore, a fairer and truer accounting of the past requires a consideration of the experiences of these previously subaltern personalities. The primary difference is that, unlike race, which might not factor into some historical considerations, particularly before 1492, gender is nearly always a consideration.

More specifically (but related), since the advent of critical theory and the application of postmodernist principles to historical inquiry, gender, along with race and class, has become a central consideration of historical inquiry. As such, it cannot be ignored if one is to engage fully with the available scholarship on any topic. That said, each person’s mileage will vary regarding how much s/he chooses to engage gender historiographically. For instance, in her essay, Joan Scott details how feminist historians have taken three approaches to gender: an “entirely feminist” analysis of patriarchy; a Marxist approach; and a psychoanalytic approach.[1] Depending on how one understands historical processes, one or more of these approaches might be appropriate.

For instance, a Marxist, who would bring a decidedly formulaic understanding of history to the study thereof, could expand his/her understanding of class struggle as a driver of history by considering not only the external economic relationships during a period based on relationships with the means of production but also the domestic relationships that emerge for related reasons. Whereas this approach was inherently limited by its emphasis on class and economics, Scott concedes that the Foucauldian approach of emphasizing power relationships and their relationship to sexual politics, allowing a generation of feminist historians to analyze the power differential in gender relationships in new terms. “In so doing,” Scott writes, “they opened the question of causality and offered a variety of solutions to it.”[2]

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[1] Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 91, no. 5 (1986): 1057-1058

[2] Ibid, 1060.