Gender in History

MERRY E. WIESNER-HANKS is Distinguished Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. She is an esteemed historian whose work has been central to the integration of women, gender, and sexuality into the study of early modern Europe and World/Global History. She is the long-time Senior Editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and author or editor of thirty books and many articles that have been published in numerous languages.

• List of Figures viiiAcknowledgments ixAbout the Companion Website x1 Introduction 1Women’s and Gender History 1World and Global History 4Gender, Sex, and Sexuality 6Difference and Intersectionality 9Theory in History 11Gender History as a Field 15Structure of the Book 172 Ideas, Ideals, Norms, and Laws 23The Nature and Roles of Men and Women 26Binaries 32Motherhood and Fatherhood 36Ideologies, Norms, and Laws Prescribing Gender Inequity 39Ideologies of Egalitarianism 423 Early Human History (to 3000 bce) 53Early Hominids 54Homo Sapiens 58Paleolithic Society and Spirituality 61Domestication 66Agricultural Societies 68The Origins of Patriarchy 724 Ancient Cities and States (3000 bce–600 bce) 85Cities and Social Hierarchies 86Writing 91Families and Households 96Work 103Religions in the Ancient Near East 106Hereditary Dynasties and Female Rulers 1115 Classical Cultures (500 bce–500 ce) 120Family Life in the Classical Cultures of Eurasia 121Sexuality in Classical Eurasia 127Philosophy and Religion in East Asia: Confucianism and Daoism 130Religious Traditions of South Asia: Hinduism and Buddhism 132Religious Traditions in the Mediterranean: Christianity 139Education and Culture 1436 The Middle Millennium (500 ce–1500 ce) 153Families, Households, and Kin in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific 154Religious Traditions Transmitted Orally 158State Based Societies in the Americas 162Courts and Courtly Culture 164The Rise and Spread of Islam 168Europe and the Mediterranean 174Cities and the Gendering of Work 1777 The Early Modern World (1500 ce–1800 ce) 184Economic Developments 185The Renaissance 191Religious Transformations 197Families and Race 200Representations of Conquest and Colonialization 206Women and Politics 2088 The Modern World (1800 ce–2021 ce) 220Industrialization 221Imperialism 227Nineteenth-century Movements for Social Change 229Modern Sexuality 236Wars, Revolutions, and Political Change 243The Industrial and Postindustrial Economy 251Families in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 258Cultural Changes in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 264Afterword 277Index 282