Women's Rights in ATLs

Had noticed issues such as gender roles and feminism don't necessarily get much play in AH -- which is part in parcel, I suppose, with the short shift culture usually gets, but AAR...

What I'm looking for is: (1) a historical PoD; (2) some brief historical results; (3) how feminism et el is butterflied from these results; and (4) how women fare comparatively in TTL?

Should be interesting...
 

Thande

Donor
Well, I know it's at least peripherally covered in Decades of Darkness, which has a fair few female viewpoint characters. In my own Look to the West I'm trying to cover it. One important change in LTTW, which could also apply to other TLs with 18th century PODs, is the survival (well, revival) of Pasquale Paoli's Corsican Republic. This is important because the Republic was the first enlightenment republic to give women the vote (although it has been debated whether they had it for national elections or just for local ones--it doesn't seem clear). Corsica was a significant influence on both the early United States and Revolutionary France, so if things had been a bit different...
 
One important change in LTTW, which could also apply to other TLs with 18th century PODs, is the survival (well, revival) of Pasquale Paoli's Corsican Republic. This is important because the Republic was the first enlightenment republic to give women the vote (although it has been debated whether they had it for national elections or just for local ones--it doesn't seem clear). Corsica was a significant influence on both the early United States and Revolutionary France, so if things had been a bit different...

That's fascinating -- conversely, I'm thinking how women's rights would have fared if the ARW were defeated, the French Rebolution delayed, and the Polish Constitution of 1791 survived. Could well be proto-feminism wouldn't be so tied to republicanism in TTL...
 

mowque

Banned
I slow such movements down, in the USA (by giving it to the states, so the Deep South takes it's time).

The UK is even more old fashioned, so things advance slowly (and no participation in the world wars).
 
Most of the revolutionary movements of the 19th and late 18th century had shades of feminism in that women often played a prominent role in the revolutionary movement. Any one or group of them being successful would directly increase women's rights ITTL, though feminism would then by irretrievably tied the revolutionary ideology in question. E.g. this is something I plan to explore for my TL where the 1848 revolutions are successful; however outside of continental Europe (Russia, Britain, North America) feminism suffers a setback ITTL as a result so it 'balances out' as compared to OTL.
 
In the one short one I did, "Sweet Lands of Liberty," I don't really get into it because the POD is 1170 (A Waldensian Reformation) and it6 ends about 1600. But, the Waldensians were pretty lliberal for the time, so I can imagine it might have advanced.

The Corsican Republic is an interesting one that I didn't know much about.

I imply in "Brotherhood and Baseball" it's gone about the way it did in OTL, but with a POD of 1863 that's pretty much run of the mill. I think having an Abigail Adams succeed her husband or some other early woman in the Senate would help a lot, if she turns out to be a really bright one, as Adams would be.

One thing I wonder if it might help is is a few countries don't adopt Salic Law. Let's say the Holy Roman Empire has an Empress, or France a reigning Queen, I don't know what POD would be required, but that might help things. Then again, Ctherine the Great and Elizabeth I didn't totally advance things, so maybe that wouldn't help as much as I think.
 
Women's rights is delayed somewhat in the ATL USA of Up With the Star due to the complications of identity caused by the Trialist system and hesitation to rock that particular boat. In the wider world the combination of colonialism and survival of more conservative regimes delays it.
 

Thande

Donor
Generally speaking I find there's a gap between law and reality here...there's a long period, sort of from the High Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (with variations) where European society was fine with women having lots of political power, providing it was 1) "unofficial", 2) not viewed as an entitlement, and/or 3) seen as a one-off. People were fine with this particular female monarch, but not with the idea of female monarchs in general. Society could accept women having lots of influence in the politics of the French Ancien Regime because it was backdoorsy and did not exist on paper. There are lots of isolated cases of individual women voting in the American Colonies/USA, Britain and elsewhere in the eighteenth century, usually widows who inherited property, but because each specific case was viewed as a special exemption. It was actually writing down in a constitution pr law that women in general (or the poor, or whatever--same with other issues) deserved such influence that made the establishment nervous.
 
Most of what I've read agrees with Thande with the proviso that before the high middle ages women could have even more material power (while also having less rights). It was the revival of Grecco-Roman culture that really accelerated the trend towards confining women. Reading the great essays of the early Ren. where there is discussion on the role of women (with lots of references to Aristotle) is a fascinating look into the midset of the period. Of course lower class women often did the same work as men even on farms when the need arose and it was common for a woman to take over her husband's trade or even represent the business in court if he died. Or if he survived, there are a few things I've read that say that sometimes the husband dealt with the production and the woman dealt with the legal aspects of the business. The Gies point out that the expression about women wearing the pants in the family goes back some 9 centuries.

In my own TL, I've slowly built on the role of women and things have worked as a counter to the mindset. Major reasons are the much larger population and more advanced hygienic practices reducing infant mortality (somewhat!) but there are others. The "women's rights" area is actually an extension of the idea of women-as-mother. The mother/nurturer not only of family, but of their community (with community being defined by social class, the richer you are the bigger your community responsibility). At the same time this bounds to the prestige (and sometimes economic power) of the family which still remains the central unit of organization.
 
In one of my US-based timelines I worked on the fact that Aaron Burr was inclined towards female suffrage to have it brought in in IIRC New York

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
In my Neanderthal timeline I haven't dealt with feminists yet, its still way too early. But the plan is to have it well advanced by the 19th or even 18th century.
Since neanderthal women were as strong or stronger than human males, it causes humans, especially Europeans to think that brain may be better than brawn, which gives women a boost.
 

Thande

Donor
MNP also makes good points. One further thing I have observed with the 18th and 19th centuries (and probably before that too) is there is a gap between how women were treated in upper class society versus lower class. Upper class attitudes are the ones we tend to picture--marry off your daughters and keep them away from anything dangerous or important, etc.--while lower class ones were somewhat closer to what we have today. As MNP says, it was more common for women to work, purely out of necessity, and there was less of the whole chivalric delicate flower attitude you see with the upper classes. In Britain in the 18th century it was common for lower class women to box, wrestle, and even duel with swords. For that matter they even used to have mixed sex fights, usually with two or three women against one man. You wouldn't get that nowadays...

As I said above, the key principle you have to bear in mind is that society is willing to accept all sorts of extraordinary things providing that they were seen as isolated examples. Like that black admiral from Ethiopia in eighteenth century Russia. On this subject, the 17th and 18th centuries had female scientists like Margaret Cavendish and Caroline Herschel, who were accepted in the community partly because they were members of existing scientific families.
 
Perhaps come up with a ATL where Ireland retains and expands Brehon law and its relative egalitarianism toward women, where women could inherit and hold property and had other rights equal to those of men. Apparently women gained even more standing under the Brehon system with the arrival of Christianity, and there is a tradition that the laws, formerly an oral tradition, were first written down and codified by St. Patrick. (But then St. Patrick is credited with doing everything in Ireland, so the reality is difficult to ascertain.)

A way for Brehon law to survive, thrive and spread beyond Ireland is needed.
 
Again promoting my Chaos TL as usual:

"Women are accepted as part of the workforce - before they have kids, or after said kids have left the home; in the time between, only work that can be arranged with familiar duties is OK, which doesn't allow for great careers of course."

"Feminism achieved female suffrage and women entering the workforce, but didn't develop more radical positions (that weren't suppressed)"

This development being stopped by the German technocratic dictatorship, which wasn't too fond of unlimited abortions or the Socialist wing of feminism.
 
I've never really thought about women's rights in my Afrikaner TL, which is my most-developed ATL, beyond how women's suffrage came to be in the Afrikaner Confederation.

(Due to its decentralized nature, some staten had it before others did, much like in the United States. The Confederation suffered a great deal of instability and revolt by non-whites in the aftermath of WWI and women throughout the state were granted suffrage in recognition of how they helped keep the Afrikaner people from being overthrown or even exterminated, especially in places where most of the men had gone off to war. Comparisons to the biblical Deborah abounded.)

Conquest of a less-developed region by the Afrikaners might uplift women to a great degree because they would not tolerate suttee, female genital mutilation, etc. but any barriers that are left will be very hard to break because the Afrikaners think the ultimate basis for their way of life is GOD HIMSELF and one would need to convince them of the godliness of any social change first.

(They abolish slavery after an extensive and primarily Biblical debate. Women's suffrage and unionization also need to find biblical backing--Deborah provides the former and I'm sure some verse about church structure and everyone being held accountable can be found for the latter. Hmm...Presbyterian structure imposed on the workplace = workplace democracy?)

About societal changes elsewhere, many of the more reactionary Southern whites left for the Confederation after the Civil War, so women's suffrage might have come earlier nationwide (and in some individual states) in the United States.
 
Actually I think many timelines take women's rights into consideration just as they consider slavery and abolition. Since everybody is mentioning their own time line in Newtons Radio https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=73275

Womens rights are accelerated by a scientific change that cascades into social, religious and political changes.
I have the roots of Gynalism (OTL feminism ) starting in the mid 1700s and two of the major scientific minds of the 19th C are women, increased nonconformism, better education for women (so they can work the semaphore) all push things that way.
 
Weren't the Etruscans pretty egalitarian in regard to womens rights? If so, have the Etruscans either do better and butterfly Rome or have Rome be more culturally influenced by the Etrucans in this regard.
 
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