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U.S. History As Women's History: New Feminist Essays (Gender & American Culture)

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Historians Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar, have edited a volume of essays that is an example of what they describe as the fourth stage of development of women's history, achieving a synthesis of what is known about men and women. Their volume is an attempt to provide a synthesis of historical scholarship on gender and its intersection with power and knowledge.

Their volume maps this intersection with a scope that is both chronologically and topically broad. The collected essays address important issues throughout the entire history of the United States, beginning with Kerber's discussion of the obligations of women's citizenship in Revolutionary America and ending with Jane Sherron De Hart's examination of female representation among elected officials in the 1990s. Topically, while there is a significant emphasis on women's reform movements, especially in the Progressive Era, topics as diverse as the cultural phenomenon of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and the creation of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia comprise the full range of gender issues examined. The claim of the title of their edited volume, that United States history is as much women's history as it is men's, is supported forcefully by the works published. None of these essays are work characteristic of earlier stages of development of the field of women's history. Evidence of women's historical existence has been found; women's contributions to significant fields, once thought to have been only the work of men have been documented; and histories have been written chronicling reform movements and other developments that were fundamentally effected by the role of women.

The overarching argument of the editors and contributors is that women's history should no longer be ghettoized as a separate historical field, but rather should be synthesized into a larger historical narrative. Women's history should no longer be a subfield of social history, based on the claim that women represent some type of separate social group. Rather, based on the identification of the political nature women's public and private actions women's history is political history. This specific volume and its essays argue that this women's history should be central to the narrative of United States history.

One flaw that can be identified in this volume, U.S. History as Women's History, is that despite the inclusion of the word in its title, the editors fail to define the term feminist. Similarly, the qualifier new is not addressed adequately. Does this volume represent a new feminist viewpoint, or does the subtitle simply indicate that these are newly published feminist essays, not representing any analytical shift, but simply recognizing the completion of new works of scholarship? These are questions that would have benefited from these authors' expertise.