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Claudia Ulbrich: Unbridgeable Differences? Gender constructions in the Early Modern Period

Thursday, November 24, 2022, 14:30 - 15:30

Since gender became an object of historical research in the early modern period, numerous studies have uncovered the contradictions and complexity of gender relations embedded in premodern societies. In Western cultures a binary gender system that considered men and women as opposites and a gender hierarchy designed in favor of men has been postulated for centuries at the level of the gender order. On this level it seems to be an anthropological constant that men are strong and important in public life while women are weak and close to nature. The situation is different for the spheres of action of men and women in their lifeworld and as far as individual gender relations are concerned. They have been subject to historical change. (Many examples of women who have exercised power show that gender is only one of many categories that affect women's agency.) Gender relations and the agency of men and women did not follow the same rules as the gender order but are related to each other. Between these various levels a seemingly insurmountable tension arises. How can we bridge these differences in gender constructions? What does this mean for the categories we work with? What consequences does this have in terms of how we narrate the story of powered gender relations?