In patriarchal society, men work in the public domain and women are restricted to the private domestic sphere. Since it is the public domain which is considered important, women become passive participants in the historical process. This is reflected in the lack of any substantial and substantive documentation about them. Just like class or race, sex has been used to create a separate identity for men and women. By studying the history of men, as if this would cover the women also, we cannot find out the realities of women’s lives during any given period. Gender like any group, class or race has always been a very powerful factor in history. It is therefore necessary to view the development of women’s history from a feminist perspective; as a distinct sociological group which experiences both overt and covert controls through legal, political and social restrictions.
The present book Gender and History comprises of twenty-eight selected papers from the session on history organized at the 12th Women’s World Congress held in Hyderabad in 2014. Focusing on different regions and different timeframes, these essays highlight the writing of history from a feminist perspective and focus on a hitherto neglected area in mainstream history. Whenever women sought to question inequalities in their own lives, they turned to history to understand the roots of their oppression and to see if they can learn from the challenges that had been made in the past. These articles clearly bring home the truth that women functioned under various challenges and limitation of a patriarchal society and it can be shown that a woman’s role is socially constructed within a specific historical context, rather than natural and universal contexts.