YBAEZ, Myrcel I.

BS Psych 4

Gender became a social issue with the concept of equality of the sexes which is relatively
new phenomena, until the end of the nineteenth century women were treated as the inferior sex
and were excluded from taking part in public life, especially in areas pertaining to politics,
education and certain professions. Gender equality is therefore an intellectual, political, social
and economic history of the changing relationship between men and women.
This famous question, first posed by the historian Joan W. Scott (1980?), raised the issue
for historians of gender of the unequal fate of men and women in periods of relative social,
economic and political renaissance. Many Italian women, daughters or relatives of the leading
humanists of the time, it could be argued, did enjoy some kind of renaissance since they were
permitted to receive educations comparable to their male peers. However, even then, there was a
distinct glass ceiling. The humanist, Leonardo Bruni, in a letter outlining a programme of study
most fitting to a woman for Battista da Montefeltro Malatesa (1383-1450) argued:
To her neither the intricacies of debate nor the oratorical artifices of action and
delivery are of the least practical use, if indeed they are not positively becoming. Rhetoric in all
its forms, public discussion, forensic argument, logical defence, and the like, lies absolutely
outside the province of woman.
In addition, not only were many of these educated women eventually compelled to
abandon their studies and choose between the options of marriage or the cloister, they also
showed a certain level of acceptance of their inferior state. Isotta Nogarola (1417-1461) for

example defended Eve in her debate with Ludovico Foscarini, Of the Equal or Unequal Sin of
Adam and Eve, claiming that Eve was less guilty than Adam on account of womens natural
ignorance and her desire for knowledge of good and evil.
In A Room of Ones Own, the British author, Virginia Woolf (d. 1941), lamented the
absence of female authors, the empty spaces on bookshelves which were only filled by men
writing, typically negatively, about Woman.
But whatever effect discouragement and criticism had upon their writing and I believe
that they had a very great effect that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which
faced them that is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it
was of little help. For we think back through our mothers if we are women.
By the turn of the twentieth century, however, Woolfs contemporaries in Britain and in
the Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the United States of America of America of
America, New Zealand and Australia were actively pushing for greater equality, establishing new
traditions and feminist mothers to inspire later generations. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony in the US and the Suffragettes led by the Emmeline Pankhurst in England were the key
pioneers of first-wave feminism, a period in which women organized themselves into public
and high profile advocacy groups, campaigning for equality in property, economic and voting
rights.
REFERENCES:

Joan W. Scott, Gender: A Useful Category for Historical Analysis, American Historical

Review (1986), pp. 1053-1075

Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own (Hogarth Press, London, 1991), pp. 70-71