Women's History, World History, and the Construction of New Narratives

Iris Berger and E. Frances White. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. lxi + 169 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-253-33476-4-0 (cl); 0-253-21309-6 (pb).

Guity Nashat and Judith E. Tucker. Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. lxi + 160 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-253-33478-0 (cl); 0-253-21264-2 (pb).

Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sánchez Korrol, with Kecia Ali. Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: Restoring Women to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. lxvii + 128 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-253-33479-9 (cl); 0-253-21307-X (pb).

Barbara N. Ramusack and Sharon Sievers. Women in Asia: Restoring Women to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. li + 266 pp.; maps. ISBN 0-253-33481-0 (cl); 0-253-21267-7 (pb).

Women's History and World History

When the editor of the Journal of Women's History asked me to review the four volumes of the Restoring Women to History series, I was reluctant. Because I had been a supporter of the project from its inception, it appeared to be a case of conflict of interest. In response, the editor suggested that I, as an advocate of the project, might write about why these volumes are important, given the difficulty of doing women's world history. Committed as I have been to both women's history and world history, I agreed. The review essay that follows endeavors to answer three questions that address the challenges and rewards of combining what have been two separate versions of the past. What problems do women's historians encounter when writing from a cross-cultural or global perspective? How have they solved them? What kinds of new narratives have rewarded their efforts?

To my surprise, I discovered that world historians, their predecessors, regional historians, and women's historians have overcome similar problems in similar ways. All have had to write with the stories of men's lives in the United States and Europe paramount in their readers' memories (however incomplete and confused those memories might be). The Fall of Rome, 1492, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Cold War--these are the familiar markers. Prophets, kings, merchant bankers, presidents, popes, and robber barons are the primary actors in an apparently seamless, linear narrative. Just as women's, world, and regional historians have shared challenges, so they have taken similar risks. The four volumes of Restoring Women to History demonstrate the successful methodological strategies these historians have used to counter and displace the familiar memories and traditional priorities. The resulting narratives transform regional and world histories. They also prove the value of placing all of women's history, not just that of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the Caribbean, into a broader global context. ¹

The Origins of the Series

The idea for the series Restoring Women to History arose out of meetings the Organization of American Historians (OAH) sponsored in the early 1980s. Historians Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel proposed extending the original OAH project beyond collections of teaching materials for United States and European history classes to meet an even more pressing need: to provide a survey history of women in other parts of the world. Grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education made possible a single volume, which the OAH printed and distributed, covering women's past experiences and activities in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa.

When this collection of narratives appeared in 1988 (revised in 1990), it represented the most authoritative general syntheses of women's history in these regions available to scholars, teachers, and students. Each of the authors was an...