Ann Towns de l’Université de Göteborg, présentera sa communication « Globalizing the Exclusion of Women from Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century » le jeudi 6 octobre, de 17h30 à 19h30. Maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e , salle D421.

Résumé :

This seminar focuses on the importance of gender in the British-dominated nineteenth century society of states. More specifically, the seminar pulls together scholarship in history to provide a grand narrative – a macro-historical account — of the centrality of gender in the development and globalization of state polities between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. The talk first focuses on the diverse ways in which gender was organized in polities around the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth century – some polities included female rule, whereas others were male dominated. The talk then shows that this diversity gave way to more uniform exclusion of women, as the barring of female political power became an informal standard of civilization in international society, embedded in British and French colonialism and scientific ideas. The expansion of the ideas and practices of British-dominated international society thus helped spread and standardize male rule, displacing gender arrangements that empowered women politically in Africa, Native America and Asia. This history is particularly important in light of contemporary assumptions about the Anglo-American origins of the political empowerment of women.