ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, historians working on East Central Europe, as on other parts of the world, have shown that historical experience has been deeply gendered. This chapter focuses on the modern history of women, and on gender as a category of analysis which helps to make visible and critically interrogate “the social organization of sexual difference.” This chapter provides a way for those who have not considered the impact of gender on the large thematic areas to easily see how a focus on gender changes established narratives. In East Central Europe as a whole, the process of nation-building had a substantial impact on the education of women and men. Within limits, patriotic modernization and development efforts had positive effects on the state of women’s education. In Estonia under Russian rule the dominant German elites successfully pursued the expansion of socially conservative gendered German-language secondary education for girls.
