Writing Gender History: A Speaking Archaeologically Task that became more difficult than it seemed

It all started with a flyer for a conference and from the sudden uprising of feminism in Archaeology—or rather an unprecedented growth of interest in Women in Archaeology amidst the situation of the global pandemic.

"But we have more women archaeology students at Speaking Archaeologically than men," argued Simran Kaur Saini as we discussed this in the Research Wing. "Women are an essential part of history and archaeology. They have been so for quite a while. Where's the debate in that?"

I had to concur with the argument wholly. I knew more women than men in Archaeology and what women at that! Some of the fiercest scholars, some serious forces to be reckoned with on the field, not to mention several archaeological entrepreneurs I know and liaise with, all of them are women. This task before us, that stemmed out of a Call for Papers invite, was going to be a cakewalk, right?

Wrong! 

That's because the problem of writing a history of women, their role in and contribution to any field (including Archaeology) doesn't stem from paucity of literature in Gender Studies: it stems from the problem of retrieval of these narratives that are so essential for anyone trying to study it.

From Draupadi to Tarabai Shinde, from the tawaifs to Ranis of Travancore—no matter who we picked and how we approached women in history, we found that despite being in the public eye, the ladies at the centre of our research were "hidden from history."

What causes this hiding in pure sight in case of Gender History, you ask?

An Infographic on our Founder, Shriya Gautam by The Heritage Lab

Primarily, it is the lack of representation of women in historical narratives. Sadly, this problem percolates to even the very recent past. Regardless of the field women chose or brought a change about in, the only narratives you find about them are narratives written by men. So, not only is there a dearth of the written word about women's contribution to anything in particular, whatever little that does exist, is written by men, who have conveniently overlooked anything that appeared less important to them or was in contrast to their perceptions about women. A popular example of this is Nur Jehan, whose depiction remains tainted in History books across various curricula, ranging from school textbooks to dissertations in academia, purely because the Europeans hated her guts and Shah Jehan didn't like her. In fact, I must confess that it wasn't until I became a Numismatist of considerable experience and stumbled upon Ira Mukhoty's Daughters of the Sun, that my opinion about the lady changed. 

Another problem is, what if the woman you're wanting to look into wasn't important enough? In the Indian context, that is arguably the most important factor that leads to a dearth of literature on enterprising women in history: if she wasn't big enough to cause a stir, and if she survived the ripple effects, she might go down in history, her place cemented in the annals by a man. In fact, as Uma Chakravarti's papers will tell you, it wasn't until Indian nationalists needed to disprove the supposed backwardness of Indian society in the face of colonial racism that glorification of Indian women became a thing of the history books. Until then, Queens and concubines lay conveniently forgotten until movements in the west necessitated a gender centric revival in the east.

Thus, even when we try as scholars, as historians and Anthropologists to piece together the History and Dynamics of Women in a particular field, we forget that what we are working on is only a fraction, a diluted representation where the only voices that can be heard are those that aristocracy, politics or the need of the moment helped to bring out, thus giving an edge to certain classes within the gender. As people who look for the lost voices of women and as women who wish to excavate what is irretrievably lost to time, we need to be more than just driven with the idea or the cause of reviving and rewriting gender history. 

We need to be able to analyse what we have before us and record from it what we can. We need to remember that if the distinction between the viewer and the viewed disappears, one loses objectivity and detachment. It isn't enough that we find the lost voices and record them. It isn't enough that we revive or bring back something. Rather, it is important we understand the way women were constructed and perceived by the society that limited their own social capabilities. And it is far more important that we understand how these women perceived themselves in such a social set up.

What personal needs, what aspirations of these women made them who they became? What led them to reconstruct their own position? What made them redesign gender in those days?

It is time we stop studying women through the lenses of other writers. It is time we look deeper to get  a clearer picture. It is time we juxtapose the representation of women in literature, art, photographs, letters, memoirs and personal journals and reconstruct our narratives because until we redefine how women are written about, we fail in ensuring an effective recording the contributions of women of today.