The role of women in historical events is often forgotten, covered up, or ignored. Comparatively female-authored sources are considerably fewer than male-authored and agency is attributed only exceptionally to women in events in the public masculine sphere described and documented by men. Such biases are fundamentally problematic for any attempts to obtain gender equality. But how do we re-inscribe the women missing from history if they are not in the sources?
Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford, Lyndal Roper, deals with such questions as a part of her examinations of the German Peasant’s War for the inaugural lecture in our ‘Uncovering Women’s History’ series. ‘Did brotherhood include women? Was its radical egalitarianism just for men as peasants called for lords to get off their horses (which literally raised them above their peasants) or insisted they address each other as brothers? Did its idealisation of manhood exclude women, who do not seem to have joined in the ‘circles’ where men took counsel together and who did not swear the oaths which bound the rebels together?’
Book your free space at this lecture here.
