103
votes
Accepted
Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
Strange at it may seem, there was a movement called "anti-suffragism" in the U.S. and U.K. composed mainly of women. Their numbers were small, since this posture would have been "counterintuitive."
...
- 104k
101
votes
Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
Yes, there were. And at the beginning of the women's suffrage movement, suffragettes were viewed by most women as oddities rather than heroic liberators.
Basically, centuries ago, due to the ...
- 4,741
77
votes
How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
Art does not exist in a vacuum, but is rather only one part of the historical record. Just as people comment on our modern standard of beauty today, so does early modern writers on theirs. Fortunately,...
- 97.2k
75
votes
Accepted
Has women's suffrage ever decided an election?
You're not the first person to ask this question.
It's obviously not possible to know exactly how any election would have gone in things were different, but we have enough demographic polling data ...
- 706
72
votes
Has women's suffrage ever decided an election?
I find this an unsatisfactory answer but perhaps it will provoke someone to make a better one along similar lines. In the 2012 US presidential election, men voted (according to exit polls) 52:45 in ...
- 541
64
votes
Accepted
Could women be crucified under Roman law?
In Antiquities of the Jews, the ancient historian Josephus reported an incident where the Emperor Tiberius explicitly ordered a woman to be crucified:
Mundus had a freedwoman, who had been made ...
- 97.2k
64
votes
Is there any evidence of armies enrolling women in fighting roles in significant number in antiquity or the middle ages?
SHORT ANSWER
In antiquity, the Scythians (Eurasian nomads) and the Sarmatians (nomads of Iranian origin who moved westwards, gradually overwhelming the Scythians) had significant numbers of female ...
- 108k
49
votes
Accepted
Did a significant number of women drive in late 1950s/1960s USA?
Looking at driver's licenses held by women and considering that manufacturers were aiming certain car models specifically at women, female drivers were not uncommon or unusual in the US in the 1950s ...
- 108k
46
votes
Accepted
Were there any high-ranking female soldiers during the Middle ages?
She wasn't technically knighted insofar as I'm aware of, but Joan of Arc springs to mind. She played a decisive role in ending the Hundred Years' War.
Cursory googling yields a few more female ...
- 23.2k
38
votes
Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
Not only were there women who opposed suffrage, there still are. For instance, here's Central Missisippi Tea Party President Janis Lane in 2012:
I'm really going to set you back here. Probably the ...
- 481
37
votes
Accepted
What proportion of women died in childbirth before modern times?
Short Answer
Due to the limited data (and the limitations of the data which is available), historians have come up with a variety of estimates around the period you are interested in. These estimates ...
- 108k
34
votes
Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
A Spanish example: Victoria Kent. Quote from the link:
Kent was against giving women the right to vote immediately, arguing that, as Spanish women lacked at that moment social and political education ...
28
votes
Were there any high-ranking female soldiers during the Middle ages?
Depending on OP's interpretation of "knighthood" and how loose the answer can be:
Scaly Llama - My favorite source on the topic.
British History Podcast - I highly recommend this discussion of ...
28
votes
Is there any evidence of armies enrolling women in fighting roles in significant number in antiquity or the middle ages?
The excellent answer above by Lars Bosteen details a significant exception to the case outlined below. Perhaps additional exceptional instances remain to be uncovered in the historical and ...
- 71.9k
28
votes
Has women's suffrage ever decided an election?
In the 1933 Spanish general election women were enfranchised by the first time, and the right won the election - while in the previous 1931 election the left had won. One of the cited causes of that ...
- 3,514
28
votes
Accepted
Why did Roman women have no praenomen?
Short Answer
Although there do not appear to be any ancient sources which specifically address this question, the most likely reason for the disappearance of female praenomen seems to be the absence ...
- 108k
27
votes
What's the correct term for a waitress in the Middle Ages?
[What] was a waitress called in the Middle Ages?
In Europe, they didn't exist as a recognized occupation.
And is there a different name for the ones who did this kind of job inside a castle, in ...
- 2,014
26
votes
How do we know baroque art depicted obese ladies because of a different ideal of beauty?
A lot of the paintings were commissioned as portraits, why would people pay for themselves to be depicted in an ugly way?
Wealth nowadays is associated with a slim, tanned, and shaped body because ...
- 261
24
votes
What is the date of this photograph of a woman riding a horse sidesaddle?
ZIP codes were introduced in 1963, and ZIP is an acronym for "Zone Improvement Plan." ZIP codes were to be an improvement on "postal zones". Thus before ZIP codes existed one would write:
John ...
- 3,291
23
votes
Why were women targeted as witches?
Extracts from Kayla Theresa Natrella's Witchcraft and Women:
A Historiography of Witchcraft as Gender History
mentioned in rougon's answer:
Main claims:
Jules Michelet:
sorceresses filled the ...
- 2,528
21
votes
Accepted
Did Peter the Great promote rights for women? If so, how?
The short answer is he didn't, not really. By "participated more actively", your source likely just means socialisation, rather than women's rights or activity in general society. To be sure, some of ...
- 97.2k
19
votes
Accepted
Was Celtic society promiscuous?
The perception that the Celts were promiscuous seems to be based on, at least in part, ancient writers’ interpretations of marital relationships and / or a superficial knowledge of Celtic customs and ...
- 108k
17
votes
Were there women who were against giving women the right to vote?
So a decade and a half ago, here in Kansas, we had a Senator named Kay O'Connor, a woman, who opposed women's right to vote. You can find all sorts of quotes from this individual around the internet, ...
- 271
17
votes
Was it possible to organize a women's uprising or feminist movement in the Middle Ages?
Concepts of prosecuting a people’s gender war for matriarchy are modern (post-Enlightenment) fantasies or farces of the reversal of modern gender roles. Correspondingly feminism and rights are both ...
- 14.6k
16
votes
What (primary) sources are there on the life of female slaves in Classical Greece, more specifically Athens?
Information on how slaves were treated in the 1,000 or so city states other than Athens is thin on the ground; for most of these city states we know next to nothing about them so comparisons between ...
- 108k
14
votes
What was the condition of women in "primitive societies" around the world?
Quite the opposite, he's arguing that "savage" societies give women higher status (from our modern point of view).
I think its important to understand that this was written by a man who benefitted ...
- 117k
14
votes
Did men and women feast together in early medieval East Francia?
I recently came across something that seems to contain an exact answer to this question.
In 826, an exiled Danish king, Harald Klak visited the court of Louis the Pious with his wife and some ...
- 97.2k
14
votes
Accepted
Have there been any great female military commanders?
Moving away from some of the more obvious examples which are easily googled (and focusing on Africa, which gets far too little attention on History SE), consider Queen Amina of the Hausa state of ...
- 108k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible