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Women played a crucial role in 1488-9 during the war of the Flemish cities against Maximilian of Austria, the regent of count Philip the Fair. They were key figures in communication networks, carrying letters between different cities and their militias. Moreover, as spies they also provided intelligence on the position of enemy armies. This article shows how various women from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges travelled almost invisibly, alone or in pairs, between towns, and also inside and outside enemy camps. These towns developed a sophisticated communication network that relied heavily on women as messengers or spies. As a result women played a more important role in such military conflicts than is generally assumed.

This article sheds light on male identities in interwar Belgian Congo by using the colony’s largest palm oil concession as a case study. Based on colonial archives and oral testimonies, it shows how vernacular and colonial understandings of masculinity interplayed and keep on influencing ways to ‘be a man’ in the present. This article is divided into four parts. First, it highlights how vigorous male bodies supposedly constituted entry points in the colonial ‘civilizing mission’. Second, it addresses the convergences between coming-of-age rituals and of palm oil labour as markers of adulthood. Third, it nuances the association of dominant masculinity with brute force by showing how the ‘strongest’ palm oil workers were suspected to use witchcraft. Fourth, it addresses the apparent contradiction between recollection of colonial labour as an experience of hardships and paternalist ‘pampering’.

Despite its high prevalence, vaginismus remains an under-researched condition up until the present day. This is not only true for the medical sciences, but also for history. Apart from a few articles about the medical discovery of the condition by Marion Sims in 1861, the history of vaginismus has never been explored. By illuminating how healthcare practitioners, women’s movements and sufferers have engaged with the issue since the 1950s, this research project will enrich the historiography of science and sexuality, women’s health, and sexual pain. Focusing on the aforementioned actors, I will examine the changing medical understandings and treatments of vaginismus, the educative and knowledge-making role of women’s health activists and the experience of sexual pain. I will do so through a comparative transatlantic lens in order to elucidate in what ways and to what extent healthcare providers, activists and sufferers have exchanged ideas and information about vaginismus overseas. Drawing on a variety of archival, published and oral sources this research project will produce the very first cultural biography of vaginismus in the postwar era.

This article attempts to study the process of gender roles transformation of German women under the influence of World War I. Gender history as a social history of the sexes has significant heuristic potential which is why the author uses it as a methodological basis of the research. The recent years have seen an increased interest in war history, the front, and the rear from the gender point of view among researchers. The gender perspective — precisely because it has long remained outside the mainstream — has challenged and fundamentally changed the contemporary historiography of German history. Gender studies demonstrate that debates about war and peace are always also discussions of the gendered social order, or the ideas of “masculinity” and “femininity” at a certain time. For a long time, in historiography, the opinion prevailed that World War I was a decisive factor in the emancipation of women in Germany in the twentieth century. However, studies of the last two decades have convincingly shown that this thesis needs to be corrected at least. The increase in the share of female labour in German industry during the war years corresponded to the pre-war trend and did not exceed it in quantitative terms. Women’s labour in the industry was the lot of the lower classes. Measures of social support of the state for the families of military personnel, on the one hand, contributed to women’s financial independence, and, on the other hand, increased their dependence on it, formed dependents. The inability of the German authorities during the war years to provide for the basic life needs of the population led to widespread illegal activities (larceny, illegal markets) and protests, which together with the military defeat, became one of the main reasons for the November Revolution., В статье предпринята попытка изучения процесса трансформации гендерных ролей немецких женщин под влиянием Первой мировой войны. В качестве методологической базы использовались наработки основанного на принципах междисциплинарности и обладающего значительным эвристическим потенциалом направления гендерная история. История войн, фронта и тыла с гендерной точки зрения привлекает внимание современных исследователей. Более того, гендерная перспектива — именно потому, что она долгое время стояла вне мейнстрима — бросила вызов и коренным образом изменила историографию современной немецкой истории. Гендерные исследования показывают, что дебаты о войне и мире всегда являются также обсуждением гендерного социального порядка или действующих в соответствующее время моделей «мужественности» и «женственности». Долгое время в немецкой историографии в трудах Ф. Эрве, А. Шазер, У. Фреверт преобладало мнение о том, что Первая мировая война стала решающим фактором эмансипации женщин в Германии ХХ в. Однако исследования последних двух десятилетий, особенно У. Даниель и Б. Кундрус убедительно показали, что этот тезис как минимум необходимо корректировать. Увеличение доли женского труда в промышленности Германии в годы войны соответствовало довоенной тенденции и по количественным показателям не превышало ее. Работа в индустрии была уделом представительниц низших классов. Меры социальной поддержки семей военнослужащих со стороны государства, с одной стороны, способствовали финансовой самостоятельности женщин, с другой — усиливали их зависимость от него, формировали иждивенческие настроения. Неспособность властей Германии в годы войны обеспечить основные жизненные потребности населения приводила к широкому распространению противозаконной деятельности (воровство, черный рынок) и формированию протестных настроений, которые вслед за поражением в войне стали одной из основных причин ноябрьской революции.

This article combines history of the family with women’s and gender history and the history of women’s education; it is based on an extensive range of archives and aims at highlighting the attitude of society and families towards women who wanted to attend University studies in the beginning of the 20th century. The matter of women’s university education is directly related to the emergence of the feminist movement in Greece. The strong preference of female university students for the exact sciences at that time was justified by contemporary scholars as a choice reflecting women’s nature. This article highlights the role played by family and social class background. To this effect, the life course of three ‘heroines’ is followed from their initial desire to undertake further studies to their participation in the social and cultural life of the capital of Greece, as a contribution to current literature on gender studies. Despite the limited number of cases discussed, we strongly believe that these women’s upbringing enhances our understanding of women’s scientific pursuits and their place in Athenian elite families.

In 1917, the Romanov dynasty in Russia came to an end as Tsar Nicholas II abdicated during the February Revolution and the First World War. The Romanovs ruled Russia for over three-hundred years as absolute monarchs and until 1917, Nicholas II and his wife Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna fervently clung to their autocratic rule and projected an image of power and stability. Yet, their choices not only shaped Russia itself but also dictated Russia’s diplomatic and cultural relationship with their future allies in the First World War: Great Britain, France, and the United States of America. From 1896 to 1917, Tsar Nicholas II floundered amid a series of crisis and this dissertation considers five key moments in his reign that illustrate the complex relationship between Russia and the allies of the First World War. These events are: the Coronation of Nicholas II in 1896; Bloody Sunday and the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905; the Romanov Tercentenary in 1913; the role of Tsarina Alexandra in the First World War from 1914-1917; and the abdication of Nicholas II and asylum request by the Romanovs in 1917. All of these events showcase the diplomatic and media representations of the Romanovs among allied nations and how Nicholas performed and presented his view of himself to the rest of the world. Each Tsar of Russia fashioned himself into a mythic and ceremonial figure to the Russian people and this dissertation argues that the governments of Great Britain, France, and the United States accepted Nicholas’ self-representations for many years and ignored his autocratic rule in favor of their own military and financial interests. In 1917, after years of excusing his behavior, they finally rejected him. Ultimately, the Romanovs held great power at home and abroad and were major players in international events in the early twentieth century but they were unable to reconcile their autocratic regime with modern democracies. In the end, Nicholas’ and Alexandra’s failure to adapt and perform their roles effectively cost them their throne and left Russia in a state of war and disarray.

Submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia.

This thesis traces the history of Australian women’s protest against nuclear weapons in the early Cold War. The 1950s and early 1960s saw a small but determined group of women take to the streets or pick up a pen to campaign for nuclear disarmament. This thesis focuses on identity-construction and the ways in which women’s activism was, and is, inexorably enmeshed with their internal and external lives. Through such an analysis, this thesis demonstrates how women forged a space for themselves in the highly gendered Cold War political climate and firmly situates women at the forefront of Cold War analysis.

By looking at the itineraries of specific individual Indian and Swiss actors going back and forth between India and Switzerland during the first half of twentieth century, the book explores the history of cultural relations between both countries. The itineraries studied here are those of Frieda Hauswirth, who searched for ways to contribute to the Indian freedom struggle; of Eva Lombard and Elisabeth Petitpierre, who went to India in order to practice medicine and save souls; of Jakob Urner, a missionary who developed an elective affinity for the Lingayat religious literature; of Selvarajan Yesudian, who teamed up with the esotericist Elisabeth Haich, and taught in Switzerland an idiosyncratic conception of yoga; and of Lizelle Reymond who published a widely read book recounting her encounter with the samkhya master Sri Anirvan., ISBN:978-3-7965-4774-4, ISBN:978-3-7965-4773-7

A partir de diálogos y recopilación de material documental en 7 países de 3 subregiones durante una década, Andrea Ivanna Gigena aborda en este ensayo la politización feminista en Latinoamérica y el Caribe / Abya Yala en su relación con las mujeres del »Plural Movimiento Indígena«. Reflexiona sobre las condiciones históricas y las construcciones genealógicas sobre las cuáles actualmente estamos discutiendo o disputando la cuestión del sujeto del feminismo.

The authors study the institutionalization of midwife specialization among women in Russia in the period from the 18th through the early 20th centuries. The main sources are legislative acts, clerical documents, as well as reports on the activities of medical institutions and maternity departments. The authors use the approaches of gender history, and the concept of professionalization as developed by E. Freidson. Midwifery was the first area of womens work that was officially recognized by the state. There were three main stages on the way to professionalizing the midwifery profession among women. The first stage (covering the 18th century) is associated with attempts to study and systematize the activities of midwives. The practical experience of midwifes was actively sought by doctors whose theoretical knowledge was limited. The second stage of professionalization (corresponding to the first half of the 19th century) was associated with the normative regulation of midwife work and the formation of a professional hierarchy in midwifery. The third stage (comprising the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century) saw a restriction of the midwives spheres of activity, as well as the active inclusion of male doctors in practical obstetrics and their rise to a dominant position. With the development of obstetric specialization, operative obstetrics, and the opening of maternity wards, midwives were relegated to a subordinate position in relation to doctors. In contrast to the United States and Western European countries, Russia did not have professional associations of midwives. Intra-professional communication was weak, and there was no corporate solidarity. In Soviet medicine, finally, the midwives subordinate place in relation to doctors was only cemented.

The social impact of Allied Forces on the Australian home front is central to research on World War II gender relations but is often overlooked in South Australia. The arrival of 20,000 American se...

American citizenship and the rights of U.S. citizenship became modern from the time of the Civil War until the Civil Rights era. Voting became the quintessential right of American citizenship as marginalized citizens won suffrage rights and noncitizen men lost the franchise in nearly two dozen states and territories. Conversely, nativist-inspired policies that counted only citizens as part of the population for redistricting purposes were gradually rescinded in states where they had long operated. At the same time, many forms of publicly funded blue-collar work and access to professional licenses were increasingly restricted to U.S. citizens. And the liminal legal status of hundreds of thousands of marital expatriates (U.S.-born women who had lost citizenship upon marrying noncitizen men) forced judges and immigration officers to interpret and administer the boundaries and meaning of increasingly exclusive citizenship rights. This dissertation explores how U.S. citizenship and restrictive “rights of citizenship” were claimed, debated, learned, and experienced by citizens and noncitizens alike from 1865 to 1965. Part I, “Consolidating the Political Rights of Citizenship,” examines state constitutional and legislative debates over alien suffrage and the inclusion of noncitizens in apportionment policies. It demonstrates the growing power of “citizen only” arguments and documents how these debates transformed the rules governing membership and participation in the polity. Part II, “Claiming, Administering, and Experiencing Employment as a Right of Citizenship,” examines state legislative and licensing records to identify patterns in laws restricting noncitizens’ access to work. These policies, which disproportionately harmed and targeted women and nonwhite immigrants, led to heightened identification requirements and made exclusive economic “rights of citizenship” more powerful, recognizable, and tangible in American life.Part III, “The Ascendance of the Rights of Citizenship,” analyzes how marital expatriates experienced and contested their alienage from the 1920s to the 1950s. It also explores how they were declared to be “citizens without the rights of citizenship” by federal immigration authorities in 1940. The courts increasingly struck this interpretation down, reasoning that citizenship status could not be separated from citizenship rights. While these rulings did not ensure that citizens possessed equal de facto or even de jure rights, they did represent a crucial transformation integral to the modern era of American citizenship: a belief that “rights of citizenship” exist, matter, and are – or at the very least ought to be – definable.

Cette thèse étudie les débats littéraires et linguistiques qui ont suivi, en Chine, l’introduction des pronoms de troisième personne marqués en genre à la fin des années 1910. Elle analyse la manière dont l’adjonction de ce marquage modelé sur les langues européennes a posé question à une époque où les relations sociales de genre se sont imposées comme un sujet d’actualité brûlant et où la littérature est devenue un outil de premier plan pour l’unification de la langue nationale. Ce travail m...

В статье представлена рецензия на монографию Хелен Раппапорт «Дневники княжон Романовых. Загубленные жизни». Реконструкция биографий дочерей Николая II Ольги, Татьяны, Марии и Анастасии осуществлена через призму «истории детства» и «гендерной истории». Отмечается как методологическая новизна подхода автора книги, так и противоречивость некоторых суждений и выводов. The article presents a review of the monograph by Helen Rappaport ‘The Diaries of the Romanov Princesses. Ruined lives’ [‘The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra’]. The reconstruction of the biographies of the four daughters of Nicholas II was carried out through the prism of ‘childhood history’ and ‘gender history’. Both the methodological novelty of Rappaport's approach and the inconsistency of some of the author's judgments and conclusions are noted.

The article retraces how the notion of cultural singularity in sexuality was constructed and weaponized in the most popular French illustrated periodical of the First World War. It argues that La Vie Parisienne’s sublimation of romantic love, sex, and Frenchness worked as a cultural tactic that, while helping the readership cope with a devastating historical disruption, undermined at the same time claims for social change. The close analysis of works by illustrator Chéri Hérouard uncovers how nationalism and anxieties of sexual dispossession contributed to integrate a fraught notion of women’s sexual consent to a broader claim of cultural superiority. This article provides a critical approach to popular and visual representations of heterosexual and non-conjugal norms of desire, seduction, and sexuality in wartime France. It also offers a historical example of how the racialization and nationalisation of gender relations, discussed as ‘Gallic singularity’ in recent scholarship, trivialises masculine aggression and produces the ambivalence long associated with the notion of women’s sexual consent in France.

Neither archives nor museums are neutral. They reflect particular sets of priorities: those of the institution; the collectors and curators within them; and those of their intended audiences. In th...

The Barros family, has, for centuries, administered the morgado of Real, the chapel of Senhora da Graça and a hospital in the city of Braga that harboured poor women. This hospital, named the Hospital de Santiago and the Hospital das Velhas (hospital for elderly women), was founded in the Late Middle Ages and continued to function until the 19th century. The current study analyses how aid to the poor, in an urban context, served as a catalyser of the prestige of the family that administered it. Using manuscript, printed and iconographic sources, processed by a multidisciplinary methodology, this investigation discusses the main patrimonial, social and symbolic coordinates that allowed the survival of the morgado and of the hospital in the long term., This work was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under Grant 2020.04746.BD., Esta publicação tem o apoio do Financiamento Plurianual do Laboratório de Paisagens, Património e Território (Lab2PT), Ref.ª UID/04509/2020, financiado por fundos nacionais (PIDDAC) através da FCT/MCTES.