Friday Reflection: Well Done, Sister Suffragette.

As a history major, I've had a lot of opportunity to think about women in history. There seems to be two different categories: women who did things and became famous because they were women, and women who did things and became famous because of those things.

I'll give you two examples. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first acknowledged female to be awarded an M. D.. What she did (going to medical school) is significant because she was a woman. Nellie Bly was a journalist who committed herself to an insane asylum to report on conditions for patients. What she did (pioneering investigative journalism) is significant despite her gender.

I have tendency to disregard the Elizabeth Blackwells as somehow less important than the Nellie Blys. I think this is partly because in some warped version of feminism, I try to eliminate gender as a factor in historical context. Many men had studied medicine and it was no surprise that a woman could do so as well. Blackwell was no more special or talented than the men who preceded her or the thousands of women who have since become doctors. The fact that we celebrate her accomplishment more than others seems sexist to me. "Oh wow! A woman doctor! That's something you'd never expected to see! What a curiosity!"

This, of course, is ridiculous. One of the hardest lessons I have learned is that history does not exist in a vacuum. I can't just eliminate factors and variables because my modern perspective tells me they should be insignificant. Blackwell lived in a time when societal gender roles placed enormous limitations on opportunities for women in the professional world, and Blackwell lead the way for all those who followed in her footsteps.

Women's history is tricky because of the limited resources we have to study them. I guess another aspect I have trouble with is how the few women we do know about seem overrepresented. What about the countless other unnamed women from the past who have made significant contributions to the narrative of history? Why on earth do we celebrate Betsy Ross (allegedly) sewing a simple flag when there are so many women who must have made more substantial contributions to the Revolutionary War? And the simple answer is that we can't celebrate those things that we don't know about. So maybe we can celebrate these unknown women symbolically through the few we do know. I think I'm okay with that.