Women Working History
“Are you sure this is the time to do another PhD, you’re so newly married, won’t your husband miss you? Is he okay with you undertaking this project?” This was the opening question from a lecturer in history whom I was meeting to discuss potential doctoral supervision. I saw my new husband stiffen at his desk in his office which I could see from the door of my office. I was glad to see he also understood how outrageous this question was. I battled internally for a moment, do I just gloss over this wildly inappropriate statement, do I address it angrily, politely, at all? “Frankly, I don’t really care if my husband approves of me going back to school, but to be honest he is wildly supportive of me following my dream…which is why he is my husband to begin with.” Listen, this was probably too kind and too much information. This man did not deserve his question to be indulged even this much. But my project had garnered very little support from the academic community at this point, and I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find a supervisor. The lecturer went on to ask, “Given that your project is about motherhood do you have any intention of becoming a mother yourself while undertaking this PhD? Because motherhood and graduate work don’t go well together,” Now this one truly floored me. Surely this is not a question he can ask me? Right there and then I knew no matter how many potential supervisors turned me down or tried to tweak my topic or tell me it wasn’t possible I would not be working with this outdated dud of a man. I wish I had answered this question better but instead I just said, “I haven’t given it much thought.” And I moved on. He finished the conversation with one more across my bow. “You should consider doing a part-time PhD instead of a full-time given that you are American. American history PhD programs tend to hold your hand and take it easy on you which is why they take four years or more. Here you would be dropped right in the deep end and expected to function on your own most of the time. That is why they take three years. So maybe you should do a part-time rather than a full-time program.”
Now I came to the history field from the law field, I was no stranger to institutional misogyny and misinformation. But this blatant, arrogant, flaunting of bigotry and outdated ideologies was honestly shocking. There was no shame as he asked me one inappropriate (borderline illegal in a professional setting) question. And what’s more I knew there would be no ramifications. There was no system for alerting. There were classrooms full of female students relying on this man for the marks and grades they needed to pursue their dreams. And this is the reality of being a woman in the history field.
I want to preface the following with an acknowledgment that I am still a PhD student. I am finishing my dissertation, but I plan on a career in the field, and I interact with those firmly entrenched in the field every day. And the fact is, this is a truly overlooked, underappreciated, and unsupervised field. Professors with the mindsets of the man I met with are everywhere. Teaching students, writing textbooks, publishing in the popular history field, speaking on podcasts, making documentaries and earning money on the foundation of biased outdated ideas. But being a woman in the historical field undertaking historical research and publishing historical studies matters. It really really matters. Studying history at all matters and you can find a discussion on that topic on my blog. But here I want to discuss why being a woman in history matters and what the reality of that looks like.
Why does it matter that women work in history? Because history, as I always say, is the context of humanity. History is the answer to why we are here and how we got here. Not just the collective societal “we” but every single one of us. The millions of moments, decisions, encounters, and events which led to each and every one of us being right here right now. Now try telling me that doesn’t matter. Now tell me you would be ok with only white men telling the world the story of you. Tell me you are ok with white men being the one voice to speak your context to try and understand you.
In many cases they are wonderful historians. The point of this post is not to denigrate the incredible male historians in the field. The point is to say there is plenty of room for all of us, and more importantly, there needs to be more representation in the historical research and writing coming out. We all need to be studying history because if we are not, we being to lose context. We only know what we know. If your experience teaches you to see life from one lens, then when you turn that lens to the past you see your shade of life reflected back. Here is something that so often happens in the course of my research which demonstrates my point above. I will read about a person or an event in the past. I will get to a point where I feel I have a pretty solid understanding of the key elements of that moment. Then I will turn to the historiography (what others have written on the topic), and I will read about the same event, the same person, from an entirely different perspective and they took away an entirely different set of key elements. They feel entirely different about it than I do, they see different impacts rippling away from that moment. It is honestly fascinating, and it can be really fun. I have learned so much from examining historical moments from different perspectives than mine.
This is why we need more diversity in the historical field. I speak here mostly about women in the field but of course we need more diversity as a whole. But forgive me for the moment for addressing just women. If women are not contextualizing humanity and offering that lens for us to examine our past, we lose that narrative from our future. And that has huge impact. And we know this. Women have been widely erased from history. The historical narrative has largely been written and understood from the male perspective, and more specifically the upper-class white male perspective. You cannot tell me that is the only perspective that matters, nor the only perspective that exists. That is simply not how all of us make decisions, interact with others, and go through our lives. Which should tell you that is not what history is. History is not a racial term. History is not a gendered term. History is the context of humanity. All of us. So, all of us should study it and write it and know it.
Now I will climb down off my soap box and turn to the numbers. Because we have them.
In a study undertaken by the Royal Historical Society nearly half of the 472 female historians who responded said they had experienced discrimination in the workplace. One in five told the study they have been the victim of sexual harassment. Here are some more numbers from the study:
47.8% of women in the field said their work life had been impacted by harassment in the past five years (this compared to. 15.7% of male historians)
18.2% of female historians had been impacted by sexual harassment (compared to 5% of men)
40.2% of women in the study reported bullying in the workplace (compared to 33.9% of men)
44.5% of the women who responded reported having been passed over for a promotion
52.9% reported being stuck in their career (compared to 21.8% of men)
When the study examined the reality of the day to day lives of female historians, they found that 42% of respondents felt they had been silenced in the workplace. 75% of women reported working nights often and 72% said they worked weekends. This compared to 52% of men.
Similar studies show similar discrimination and harassment in the fields of archaeology and palaeontology.
The thing about these fields is they are often undervalued by society and therefore overlooked. If we collectively decide that these fields and thereby the people working in them don’t matter, then there is no oversight in place to ensure these discriminatory actions are being reprimanded and eradicated. Instead, they are allowed to continue, and this makes it harder for the representation needed to be there reflected in the studies, the publications and on the shelves and televisions of other women. And obviously, well it should be obvious, this matters. Why? Well, here are some more numbers. In a study titled ‘Successful female leaders empower women’s behaviour in leadership tasks’ researchers asked 149 students (both male and female) to give a public speech. During the speech they were exposed to a picture of Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel, Bill Clinton or no picture at all. When female students were shown no picture or a picture of Bill Clinton, they spoke less than their male counterparts. When female students were shown pictures of Hilary Clinton or Angela Merkel the gender difference disappeared. Women seeing other women. Women being represented to other women mattered. In action. Women spoke for longer at higher quality when seeing women of power and success.
This translates to history. History is my answer to everything. There is no situation I will be in that someone in history has not also shared. I can turn to the annals of history to see how people encountered, overcame, failed or succeeded in the same or similar situations. People before me have been heartbroken, have lost people, have gotten jobs, overcome hardship, failed, gotten back up, moved on, been stuck, been sad, been mad, been happy, content overjoyed all the experiences I have someone has had before. But if I turn to the past for answers and the only people represented there are upper class white men then there is no evidence that I, a woman, can do this. But if I turn to the past, the context of humanity, and see faces and experiences which reflect mine then I know I can do this. I can overcome. I can conquer. I can be happy. I can be and that being is context for future humanity.
SOURCES
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/one-five-uk-female-historians-reports-sexual-harassment
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103113000206?via%3Dihub