Why do American women need to reclaim their place in written history at all? When did they go “missing”? Once upon a time in America, women were well-known writers of popular history. Between the time of the American Revolution and the late 19th century, women such as abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale, joined the ranks of women’s rights activists like Sarah Grimke, Margaret Fuller, and Susan B. Anthony, among others, in writing histories about women for popular audiences.
These women were often called amateur “scribblers” by the generation of university-trained male historians who founded the formal academic discipline of history in the 1880s. They were not taken seriously as historians.
From the 1880s to the 1960s, male scholars dominated the American historical profession and therefore, the content of history. Few historians took an interest in the history of women and it was presumed that women simply hadn’t left enough historical records to facilitate writing books about the subject or incorporating women into history curriculum.
Educated women knew better. From the 1920s forward small numbers of female historians earned graduate degrees in history, labored quietly in the archives, and ventured tentatively into the study of American women’s history. Yet, the women’s history they produced received little recognition from the male mainstream of the historical profession. It certainly didn’t filter down into K-12 or undergraduate history education.
During the second half of the 20th century, feminist historians launched a women’s history “renaissance” of sorts. They established formal archives featuring historical records left behind by women. They produced an explosion of formal women’s history scholarship. This massive body of scholarship was recognized within academia, but not incorporated into K-12 education or even integrated evenly into college-level history curriculum across the nation.
Making matters worse, women’s history also became a political target during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Where conservatives held political sway on school boards, in history departments, and on state curriculum boards, women’s history could not find an enduring place. Indeed, American history in general became a target of conservative ideologues who wanted American history students to learn only traditional, patriotic history narratives.
And so, millions of Americans across the nation remain largely unaware of the rich body of scholarship in the history of American women waiting to be discovered on library shelves and more fully incorporated into American history curriculum across the country’s schools, colleges, and universities. This body of scholarship encompasses the history of all Americans regardless of ideological creed, race, gender, ethnicity, or class. It makes clear that women have been the co-creators of American civilization in every regard.
History is both a product and a shaper of culture and identity. It signals to readers what we value, and who we think has a legitimate stake in the political process. Women should reclaim and explore their place in history. It should be promulgated widely so that American women today may appreciate more deeply the persistence of patriarchal systems that relegate them to secondary roles in the drama of American history; the essential contributions women have made to the building of the republic; and the long, hard struggle women have waged for human and civil rights.
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