Gender History Across Epistemologies

Gender History Across Epistemologies offers broad range of innovative approaches to gender history. The essays reveal how historians of gender are crossing boundaries - disciplinary, methodological, and national - to explore new opportunities for viewing gender as a category of historical analysis. Essays present epistemological and theoretical debates central in gender history over the past two decades Contributions within this volume to the work on gender history are approached from a wide range of disciplinary locations and approaches The volume demonstrates that recent approaches to gender history suggest surprising crossovers and even the discovery of common grounds

This is the first collection by influential feminist theorists to focus on the heart of traditional epistemology, dealing with such issues as the nature of knowledge and objectivity from a gender perspective.

Science, Technology and Gender studies (STG) include the different approaches to feminist epistemologies, their current debates and also the theoretical analysis of different scientific controversies around cases that involve women's bodies and health, sex/gender, and techno-scientific practices. These studies are linked to the demand for another type of hybrid knowledge that revalorizes the practices, the embodied experience and care, as well as the subject positions traditionally excluded from the scientific community. The diversity of voices has allowed a plural knowledge in techno-scientific practices to emerge as well as the identification of gender, class, sexuality, race, functional diversity inequalities, for example. This has made possible a bioethical reflection which is not understood as abstract normative principles but linked to the practices and lived experience. Divided into three parts, this edited volume presents original and insightful research on STG from feminist epistemologies. The first part addresses fundamental theoretical questions that feminist epistemologies raise; and how they confront complex social problems, such as gender-based violence. The second part deals with research practices or processes, explicitly showing the relationship between science and policy. Finally, the third part presents some case studies that show the multidimensionality of the problems and the depth and richness of these analyses. The contributions included in the volume present original and in-depth research on local case studies within Spain. Not only challenging the hegemonic and global perspectives on different issues, this volume also opens up and enables discussion of these global narratives. This edited volume is a useful tool for researchers and university students in multiple fields such as gender studies, feminist epistemologies, STS, cultural history or transgender studies.

Women, Migration, and Aging in the Americas analyzes how immigrant women have coped with life after they settled in the Americas, from the 19th–21st centuries. It explores their empowerment processes, the type of gender inequalities they faced, and their destinies as they aged; whether they resided in the destination country throughout their lives or returned to their home country. The book shows that many immigrant women were able to secure their wellbeing autonomously as they aged, after they retired, and/or when they became widows. The authors offer new research material on immigrant women’s aging experiences, their innovative conclusions contrasting with the historiography that has often argued that aging immigrant women were dependent upon their husbands and later their children (especially their daughters) for survival. They consider inter- and intra-continental female migration and compare immigrant women’s aging experiences, analyzing diverse groups who migrated within the Americas or from other continents (Europe and Africa in particular) to the Americas. Each chapter analyzes the issue using different sources, methods, and approaches to measure the correlation between these women’s geographical, cultural, ethnic, and social backgrounds and their life experiences as women, wives, mothers, and aging widows. The authors show that many of the immigrant women assumed power, responsibilities, autonomy, and perhaps independence within the household, and therefore could make decisions for themselves and their families. This book will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and graduate students of migration studies, gender studies, women’s studies, care studies, history, sociology, and social anthropology.

This volume presents substantially revised and new essays on methodology and approaches in foreign and international relations history.

History has traditionally privileged elites and their accomplishments. World Histories from Below provides an antidote, placing 'ordinary' people and subordinated subjects at the heart of the themes it explores. Arguing that disruption and dissent are overlooked agents of historical change, it takes a global view of topics including political revolution, religious conversion, labour struggles and body politics. This 2nd edition includes two additional chapters on indigenous peoples, migration and environmental histories from below. With an updated preface, this enhanced text also includes additional images and case studies to grapple with themes that have more recently come to the fore, such as populism and the environment. Offering a study of these themes from 1750 to the present day, World Histories from Below refocuses our entire approach to teaching world history.

Gender, Imperialism and Global Exchanges presents a collection of original readings that address gendered dimensions of empire from a wide range of geographical and temporal settings. Draws on original research on gender and empire in relation to labour, commodities, fashion, politics, mobility, and visuality Includes coverage of gender issues from countries in Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia between the eighteenth to twentieth centuries Highlights a range of transnational and transregional connections across the globe Features innovative gender analyses of the circulation of people, ideas, and cultural practices

In 2006, the United Nations reported on the “feminization” of migration, noting that the number of female migrants had doubled over the last five decades. Likewise, global awareness of issues like human trafficking and the exploitation of immigrant domestic workers has increased attention to the gender makeup of migrants. But are women really more likely to migrate today than they were in earlier times? In Gender and International Migration, sociologist and demographer Katharine Donato and historian Donna Gabaccia evaluate the historical evidence to show that women have been a significant part of migration flows for centuries. The first scholarly analysis of gender and migration over the centuries, Gender and International Migration demonstrates that variation in the gender composition of migration reflect not only the movements of women relative to men, but larger shifts in immigration policies and gender relations in the changing global economy. While most research has focused on women migrants after 1960, Donato and Gabaccia begin their analysis with the fifteenth century, when European colonization and the transatlantic slave trade led to large-scale forced migration, including the transport of prisoners and indentured servants to the Americas and Australia from Africa and Europe. Contrary to the popular conception that most of these migrants were male, the authors show that a significant portion were women. The gender composition of migrants was driven by regional labor markets and local beliefs of the sending countries. For example, while coastal ports of western Africa traded mostly male slaves to Europeans, most slaves exiting east Africa for the Middle East were women due to this region’s demand for female reproductive labor. Donato and Gabaccia show how the changing immigration policies of receiving countries affect the gender composition of global migration. Nineteenth-century immigration restrictions based on race, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, limited male labor migration. But as these policies were replaced by regulated migration based on categories such as employment and marriage, the balance of men and women became more equal – both in large immigrant-receiving nations such as the United States, Canada, and Israel, and in nations with small immigrant populations such as South Africa, the Philippines, and Argentina. The gender composition of today’s migrants reflects a much stronger demand for female labor than in the past. The authors conclude that gender imbalance in migration is most likely to occur when coercive systems of labor recruitment exist, whether in the slave trade of the early modern era or in recent guest-worker programs. Using methods and insights from history, gender studies, demography, and other social sciences, Gender and International Migration shows that feminization is better characterized as a gradual and ongoing shift toward gender balance in migrant populations worldwide. This groundbreaking demographic and historical analysis provides an important foundation for future migration research.