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...

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.
While it is unimportant if "a" history is written by a man or a woman, it is important if all of history is written by one gender or another. The fact is, while secondary characteristics may be more important than an individual's gender, gender can help determine secondary characteristics. If history is written only by men, it is a logical conclusion that women's contributions are eventually going to be missing from history. From the evidence presented by Des Jardins, this already occurred once in American history (13-15). Likewise, if history is written only by one race, the contributions of other races, and the transgressions against them, are also going to disappear from history. In order to offer a complete vision of history, historians of every race, sex, and background need to contribute to it. In this way, it does matter whether or not men and women write history, not whether men or women write history. Her story, and his, and hers over there are all equally important to offering a complete understanding of American history.

Works Cited

Des Jardins, Julie. Women and the Historical Enterprise in America: Gender Race and the Politics of Memory, 1880-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.