QUOTES
When
I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not
exist.
Women's
history is the primary tool for women's emancipation.
Everything
that explains the world has in fact explained a world that does not exist, a world
in which men are at the center of the human enterprise and women are at the margin
"helping" them. Such a world does not exist -- never has.
We
can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded
to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn
by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than
theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences
and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility
of making other choices and thus they determine future events.
Historical
events are infinitely variable and their interpretations are a constantly shifting
process. There are no certainties to be found in the past.
Long-term
commitment to an intimate relationship with one person of whatever sex is an essential
need that people have in order to breed the qualities out of which nurturant thought
can rise.
When
you get older, you have a desire to look at your whole life, not just the end
result and not just a particular point.
Our
ideas about what is possible for the future are formed out of our knowledge of
what was possible in the past.
I
think that we are for the first time now at a point where both men and women are
beginning to see that the world was not just made by men, that civilization was
not just made by men, and that women are as capable as men of giving leadership,
innovating social ideas and solutions.
