The History of Women and Gender: French perspectives on the last twenty years

This presentation sketches the slow growth of acceptance for and ultimate success of women’s & gender history in French academic circles. In order to briefly evoke the French situation, the author regroups her responses to the five questions posed by Chen Yan and Karen Offen by examining realizations to date (questions 1 & 2) and emerging themes for research (questions 3 to 5). The author concludes with a final remark about a new category of analysis—gender regimes—recently introduced by women’s historians of the medieval and early modern periods. An important recent development in the production of women’s history in France is its widening out from the ‘national’ to a more expansive view that includes empire and comparative history, and new media initiatives such as bilingual journal publications in French and English, and e-journals.