Women are a Niche Topic

The NSW Board of Studies seems to be taking steps towards equal gender representation in its history curriculums, with at least one dot point per topic dedicated to women. In universities, arts and social science courses are increasingly offering subjects on women and sexual politics outside of a gender studies topic. It would seem that women are finally being represented in history and education, which is basically Christmas come early. However this article would have no substance if there wasn’t a catch.

The catch:

When we specifically set aside areas of history, curriculums or discussion forums, we create an interesting narrative about the role and place of women in these areas. Constantly providing an extra, different space for learning and talking about women brings female representation at the cost of further alienating women from the mainstream. It is somewhat inappropriate to characterise an entire half of the human population as a niche topic, but that is reality of current female representation in education. Having “Women in WWI” or “Women in Stalinist Russia” as a single dot point on the Modern History high school syllabus is better than nothing, but it consolidates inaccurate and mildly oppressive assumptions that women exist outside the sphere of mainstream history. Complimentarily, men and masculinity is further understood as the “norm”, where women and femininity are outliers.

Even within the women’s studies, this isolation from “regular” discussions causes an oversimplification and misrepresentation of the female existence. Interestingly, by opening spaces overtly dedicated to women’s representation, the dominating academia and general discourse is specifically feminist. While this has given birth to a plethora of incredible feminist revisionary history and empowering spaces for learning gender politics, feminism does not represent or incorporate every woman who has ever lived. Women have made amazing contributions to every aspect of society; many of them outside the sphere of feminism, and many of them not identifying as feminists. When women are given a specific space within the study of philosophy, for example, the “women’s philosophy” studied is feminist, or analysed through a feminist lense. As a result, the hundreds of years of general philosophy written by women are lost entirely, as they do not belong in mainstream studies, nor in feminist spaces. Although numerically, more females may be present on a national curriculum or in common knowledge, they are considered less as regular actors in society, and more as one-track feminists. And as we know, simplifying women to one-dimensional beings is a sure criterion of sexism.

However this is a legitimately two-sided debate. It is necessary to pursue specific women’s studies to initially grow awareness of women’s presence in history, academia, and current society. Spaces for women are extremely empowering, and bring attention to the inequalities between genders. That said, the end goal is an acceptance of female representation in mainstream education without pigeonholing women into only feminine or feminist topics. We need to be aware of exactly how we represent women with complexity, accuracy and intersectionality, rather than being satisfied with a numerical increase in women’s names printed in textbooks.

Often when we appreciate humans, we default to appreciating men. When we swing to focus on women, we only understand women through a niche, feminist lense, and do not hold the same level of respect for these areas of history. A post-oppression society would look like a place where we can study people who have contributed to literature, science, jazz music, any topic in the world, and discuss females purely in the context of their lives as human beings.

Leave your thoughts and comments below!

Hannah