Gender and the Politics of History

This landmark work from a renowned feminist historian is a foundational demonstration of the uses of gender as a conceptual tool for cultural and historical analysis. Joan Wallach Scott offers a trenchant critique of the compartmentalization of women’s history, arguing that political and social categories are always fundamentally shaped by gender and that questions of gender are essential to considerations of difference in history. Exploring topics ranging from language and class to the politics of work and family, Gender and the Politics of History is a vital contribution to feminist history and historical methodology that also speaks more broadly to the ongoing redefinition of gender in our political and cultural vocabularies.

This anniversary edition of a classic text in feminist theory and history shows the evergreen relevance of Scott’s work to the humanities and social sciences. In a new preface, Scott reflects on the book’s legacy and implications for contemporary politics as well as what she has reconsidered as a result of her engagement with psychoanalytic theory. The book also includes a previously unpublished essay, “The Conundrum of Equality,” which takes up the question of affirmative action.

Preface to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Toward a Feminist History
1. Women’s History
2. Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis
Part II: Gender and Class
3. On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History
4. Women in The Making of the English Working Class
Part III: Gender in History
5. Work Identities for Men and Women: The Politics of Work and Family in the Parisian Garment Trades in 1848
6. A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l’industrie à Paris, 1847–1848
7. “L’ouvriere! Mot impie, sordide . . .”: Women Workers in the Discourse of French Political Economy, 1840–1860
Part IV: Equality and Difference
8. The Sears Case
9. American Women Historians, 1884–1984
10. The Conundrum of Equality
Notes
Index