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I find it interesting that when discussing women in history, they are catagorized more often than men. The types of work that women historically preform are labeled as "feminine" and are sometimes seen as unequal to that of the more accepted and "respected" work that men have historically done (p11). The jobs themselves are given gender specific terms, personifying the jobs gives them their own entitiy ("feminine" and "masuline" which are terms generally reserved for people and behaviors). On top of this separation women are recorded based on whether they were "good" or "bad". (p 17) The idea of really discerning whether or not a man was "good" or "bad" had more to do with how he preformed his job or how he contributed to society, whereas a woman was labeled based on their personal morals and virtues (this is not to say that men are not judged based morals, but it is more common for someone to mention a woman's morals as more important to protect than a man's). I wonder if there will be a time that "women's history" is more in line with how men's history is recorded? Will personal virtues (such as virginity, femininity, or feminist feelings) ever be separated from how women are recored in history books? --jmarshal



When writing women's history, how important is it to separate social gender and biological sex? And how should historians approach the concept of hoosexuality in modern writing? Should it be mentioned or should it not? Is it important? -- jmarshal