Karen Offen è una storica e studiosa indipendente il cui lavoro approfondisce la storia dell'Europa moderna, con un focus particolare sulla Francia e la sua portata globale. La sua erudizione esamina il pensiero e la politica occidentali attraverso la lente della famiglia, del genere e dello status relativo delle donne. Esplora anche la storiografia, la storia delle donne e la storia comparata. La sua ricerca illumina le storie nazionali, regionali e globali del femminismo.
The book delves into the intense discussions surrounding women's rights and roles during the French Third Republic. It provides a thorough reconstruction and analysis of the debates that defined this era, highlighting the social, political, and cultural factors at play. By examining various perspectives, the work sheds light on the complexities of gender issues and the impact of these discussions on French society.
Debates around the 'woman question' originated in France in the late Middle
Ages, and Karen Offen here offers a panoramic account of changing ideas of who
women were and should be, and what they should be restrained from doing, from
the fifteenth to the late nineteenth century.
This is the second book in a two-part collection of 264 primary source documents from the Enlightenment to 1950 chronicling the public debate that raged in Europe and America over the role of women in Western society. The present volume looks at the period from 1880 to 1950. The central issues--motherhood, women's legal position in the family, equality of the sexes, the effect on social stability of women's education and labor--extended to women the struggle by men for personal and political liberty. These issues were political, economic, and religious dynamite. They exploded in debates of philosophers, political theorists, scientists, novelists, and religious and political leaders. This collection emphasizes the debate by juxtaposing prevailing and dissenting points of view at given historical moments (e.g. Madame de Staël vs. Rousseau, Eleanor Marx vs. Pope Leo XIII, Strindberg vs. Ibsen, Simone de Beauvoir vs. Margaret Mead). Each section is preceded by a contextual headnote pinpointing the documents significance. Many of the documents have been translated into English for the first time.
