Separate Spheres: Analytical Persistence in United States Women's History

Abstract

Since the 1960s United States women's history has seen a dramatic rise in productivity, reclamation of the past, innovation of new theories and strategies, and analysis of the roles of women in society. Despite this growth, or perhaps because of it, a persistent debate about “separate spheres” has provided a common thread within scholarship of the past four decades. Original separate spheres scholarship demonstrated how the sexual division of labor intensified through industrialization in the mid‐nineteenth century. Subsequent scholarship critiqued separate spheres metaphors, calling attention to the ways in which women of color have rarely had the privilege of occupying a strictly domestic realm. Such arguments only encouraged more analysis and application of separate spheres metaphors until questions about women's and men's roles in society, private and public realms, domestic and political influence pervaded most scholarship about women regardless of race, class, and region.

“Assuming the privilege” of bridging divides: Abigail Fowler-Chumos, practical phrenology, and America’s Gilded Age.

“…Nonetheless, the separate spheres concept remains used and useful. Broadened to include considerations of “class, sexuality, religion, national origin, and citizenship” (Warren, 2007, p. 265), and recognized for its proscriptive significance (Kerber, 1988), it provides a way of identifying and structuring the lived experiences of 19th-century women whose stories might otherwise remain untold (Mower & Weil, 2011). And this is how it will be used in telling the story of Abigail Ayers Doe Fowler-Chumos.…”

The Home as Battlefront: Femininity, Gendered Spheres, and the 1943 Women in National Service Campaign

“…In recent years, however, feminist researchers have engaged in spirited debate over the concept. While some have argued that its explanatory value is limited (e.g., Kerber, 1988;Lopata, 1993;Olsen, 1999), others have continued to defend its usefulness (e.g., Cott & Faust, 2005;Cutter, 2003;Warren, 2007), albeit in restricted contexts. 6 This study supports those scholars who value the continuing importance of gendered spheres as an analytical perspective that is useful in critical and historical scholarship.…”

A vueltas con las dos esferas. Una revisión historiográfica

“…Warren (2007): 262. 11Jones (1985);Gray-White (1985), citadas ambas obras enWarren (2007): 264.12 Pateman (1995): 22 Landes (1988)…”