In honour of a lazy day spent watching the discovery channel:
I'm an archaeology student and one of my areas of interest is women, how they were represented in societies and how history has portrayed them. As an introduction to how women have been seen through time I'd recommend 'The Second Sex' by Simone De Beauvior. It explains the concept of 'otherness' very well. To truly study women in history you have to be aware of the 'otherness'. I suppose a brief introduction to how the concept of the other relates to women in history is thus:
Society and history is defined by those in power, this has without a doubt been men. Women did not have the means to represent themselves, the way we see women through historic documents, art etc is through the eyes of men.
As any good student knows, history is full of bias. We are informed of the bias of the victors, the powerful. What we are not told so clearly and what (to my mind at least) is not reiterated often enough is that women are also on the end of this bias. We may be told all about the roles of women, their rights etc but these documents we read will have invariably been written by men. Obviously men are not women, a man will have not had the same status as a woman in a society.
We are not seeing woman as herself but how she is perceived to be by someone else, she is not how society sees it's self she is 'the other', we see her through the male gaze, we do not see her as she represented herself. She is being spoken for, she has not been free to speak for herself. So when we study women in history we must be aware of this.
I'd like to include a little info about one of my favourite historical women, Hatshepsut Queen and King of Egypt. Reigned c 1479-1458 BC.
Yes I said Queen AND King. Hatshepsut was the eldest child of Thutmoses I, a powerful Pharaoh and well renowned. However as Egypt was a patriarchal system , when Thumoses died he left a problem; He left no male heirs. He had a male child Thutmoses II by a secondary wife however Hatshepsut was the child of his primary wife 'the great royal wife'. Hatshepsut was married off to Thumoses II who by all accounts was a bit of a looser, it is thought she exerted a strong influence over his (uneventful) reign .
She and Thutmoses II had a son Thutmoses III , and she reigned with him as co regent after Thutmoses II died, however at some point she became known as Pharoah and depcitions of her showed her in full royal regalia including the Pharonic beard. It's clear from many inscriptions she was seen as a legitimate ruler , although a few seem to be unsure as whether to call her him or her seeming to switch between the two.
Her reign was regarded as a good one, she achieved much more than her husband, Thutmoses II:
She sent an expedition to Punt. Expeditions in Egypt were costly and needed many resources, this could only have been undertaken if Egypt was prosperous. Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt was the first for hundreds of years .
She lead military campaigns into Sinai, Nubia and the Levant.
She was one of the most prolific builders of Egypt, her fantastic Mortuary temple is regarded as one of the finest buildings in Egypt.
Now this is a very brief overview of things. I'm too tired and lacking in resources at the moment to do a detailed even vaugely academic study, but I find this woman fascinating. What is also fascinating is the opinions of earlier historians and archaeologists who assumed she must have been merely a front for her rumoured lover and Chief Steward , Senenmut (some tomb workers had some cheeky grafitti of the two :http://www.maat-ka-ra.de/english/personen/senenmut/senenmut_hatschepsut.htm , proof celebrity sex scandals and gossip are nothing new!)
Assuming that it was he who had the power as she, merely a woman, could not possibly be a successful leader of a great state. However, she held the power and Senenmut would have needed her authority to rule or indeed hold any power as he was a common born man and she was of royal blood. (This whole muddle of interpretation being an example of the bias of otherness and plain sexism mentioned above).
So Hatshepsut did indeed rule Egypt successfully, indeed more successfully than many of her male predecessors and successors and has left a lasting legacy of magnificent buildings and statuary.
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I love the "Second Sex" as well and was informed of new knowledge concerning women after reading it. This is pretty amazing as the book was written about 60 years ago. Beauvoir is still one of my favorite authors.
In an absolutely brilliant political maneuver, Hatshepsut declared herself the son of Ra (that's right, the son). The priesthood did not dare challenge her godhood and supported this. She was made pharaoh and considered to be a man for all intents and purposes. What a fucking badass. :)