Old Saying, \"History Is Written

¶ … old saying, "history is written by the victors." Such a saying is interesting, and when one looks at American history, appears to be true. In fact, it is only in the past few decades that most general American history textbooks addressed troubling social issues such as slavery, the treatment of Native Americans, or the struggle for sexual equality. However, when looked at in a different context, the quote has new implications. If history is, indeed, written by the victors, then what does the fact that so much of history has been written by men mean? Furthermore, does the fact that most of society no longer regards mankind as the conqueror of womankind mean that a gender difference in who is writing history has more or less importance? For such a complicated question, the answer is a surprisingly simple maybe. Because a historian's gender is less important than her secondary characteristics, on an individual level it does not matter whether men or women are writing a particular American history.

Given that gender equality is one of the major struggles facing American women, regardless of race, since the beginning of America, it may initially be difficult for one to understand why gender is less important than a historian's secondary characteristics. However, it is precisely because of the intensity of the so-called gender wars in America that gender is less important that a writer's other characteristics. It is those secondary characteristics, such as race, socio-economic status, and religious and political affiliations, that determine a writer's personal beliefs and biases. Because it is rarely a writer's gender, but their secondary characteristics, that determine a writer's gender and other biases, it is unimportant whether a history is written by a man or a woman.

Take, for example, the different perspectives that could be taken by two writers, both women, about women being granted access to higher education in the 20th Century. The first woman writer is a member of the middle-class, and she and her husband both have to work in order to keep their family in the middle class. That historian may begin her history with women getting equal access to higher education, which led to more women entering the workforce in higher-paying jobs. In addition, that historian could accurately show that, traditionally, as women have entered an occupation, it has become devalued by society, and the members of the occupation have then suffered a relative decline in pay. As a result, the historian could conclude that women's access to higher education has led to a society of families that cannot maintain a middle-class lifestyle without two incomes. In contrast, if that same history were written by an upper-middle class writer, whose husband is able to stay at home with her children while she pursues her career, it would look dramatically different. The second historian would emphasize that access to education gave women the ability to compete with men in traditionally male fields, such as academia. In fact, current statistics reveal that more women than men are seeking secondary and post-graduate degrees, which should eventually lead to a gender shift in academia. Both historians are working with the same historical evidence, but their conclusions, and the facts they choose to support those conclusions, are going to be different, because their life experiences have been different.

This position is reinforced by Sarah Bolton. Although her histories were extremely popular, Bolton "never regarded herself as one of the great writers or intellects of history, a distinction she reserved for the male heroes of her books" (Des Jardins, 16). Des Jardins even goes so far as to guess at Bolton's motivations, venturing that, "perhaps Bolton perceived anonymity for herself and all women custodians of the past as a necessary cross to bear; women did not make history but recounted it for the benefit of younger generations" (16). However, though her gender remained constant, Bolton's position changed during her lifetime and she began writing histories of women and openly advocating the role of women in social change (Des Jardins, 17). Therefore, Bolton is an example of how secondary characteristics are more influential on how a historian presents history than gender is.

Furthermore, in addition to being secondary to changeable characteristics, gender may also be secondary to other immutable characteristics. Throughout most of American history, race was a more unifying and important characteristic to most African-Americans than sex. After all, while men had de facto superiority over women, African-Americans were considered the legal property of whites for the greater part of American history. Therefore, an African-American man may be better qualified to write a history about the experience of African-American women than a white woman would be. Therefore, the writer's secondary characteristics are more important than gender.

While the first two examples presume an unintentional bias, one also has to understand that historians, just like other people, also exert intentional biases. There are "histories" out there that distort factual realities in order to forward some type of agenda. These histories include books that use selected facts to deny that the Holocaust occurred or use the fact that the first Blacks came to America willingly as indentured servants to support the idea that the institution of slavery was not as horrific as otherwise portrayed. The writers of these histories have agendas, and their writings are used to further those agendas. Women are not immune from this type of behavior. In fact, in the so-called gender wars, women make up a large part of the right, using the word "feminist" as an epitaph, while exercising rights they would never have had if it were not for the first American feminists. In addition, this biased writing is nothing new. When speaking of the preeminent female historians of the last 1800 and early 1900's, Des Jardins stated that women were gaining prominence by writing collective biographies, which "allowed women to disseminate their prescriptions for national manhood to mass audiences as never before" (15). With this statement, Des Jardins introduces the idea that, by choosing the subjects of their histories, writers introduce personal bias into history.