ABSTRACT
Gender is one fundamental organizing principle of human societies. As such, it should be integral to world history survey courses—as basic as economic systems, growth of cities and states, trade, conquest, and religion. Students need to learn about the changing and various distinctions of gender that have divided the lives of women and men from prehistory to the modern period. Pervasive assumptions that women have always kept house and cared for children should yield to knowledge about women’s productive labor in gathering and growing crops, in weaving textiles in homes and factories, in marketing, and in providing essential social services. Considering gender reveals critical differences in the family foundations of societies—varying from how marriages were contracted and ancestry calculated to how property was transferred and classes formed. That women had no public role in classical Athens is relevant to democratic theory and to understanding why American women’s demand for voting rights was ridiculed before 1920. Whether considering religion, literacy, health, art, slavery, war, or trade, gender usually mattered, and to teach world history accurately, we need to explore this and explain how it mattered.
