Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men through American HistoryUniv of North Carolina Press, 06.01.2009 - 448 Seiten In a sweeping synthesis of American history, Mary Ryan demonstrates how the meaning of male and female has evolved, changed, and varied over a span of 500 years and across major social and ethnic boundaries. She traces how, at select moments in history, perceptions of sex difference were translated into complex and mutable patterns for differentiating women and men. How those distinctions were drawn and redrawn affected the course of American history more generally. Ryan recounts the construction of a modern gender regime that sharply divided male from female and created modes of exclusion and inequity. The divide between male and female blurred in the twentieth century, as women entered the public domain, massed in the labor force, and revolutionized private life. This transformation in gender history serves as a backdrop for seven chronological chapters, each of which presents a different problem in American history as a quandary of sex. Ryan's bold analysis raises the possibility that perhaps, if understood in their variety and mutability, the differences of sex might lose the sting of inequality. |
Inhalt
1 | |
19 | |
PART II DIVIDING THE PUBLIC REALM | 145 |
PART III WOMEN REMAKE GENDER IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | 199 |
Notes | 325 |
361 | |
Acknowledgments | 409 |
411 | |
Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen
Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History Mary P. Ryan Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 2006 |
Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Women and Men Through American History Mary P. Ryan Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2009 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
African American authority became become called century chap chapter child citizenship civil colonial created culture daughters divide division domain domestic early economic educated England equal European example fathers feminine feminism feminist fields Freedom gender girls groups House household human husbands immigrants Indian issues labor force ladies land late less lines lives major male and female marriage married masculinity maternal meaning middle motherhood mothers movement mystery native nineteenth North once organized patriarchal percent political position practices public sphere race racial reform relations relatively roles sexual slave slavery social society South space status suffrage tion took tribes twentieth Union United wife wives woman Womanhood women workers World York young