Writing Women's History

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Tejas
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Writing Women's History

Post by Tejas »

I've been writing and playing mostly history questions for a while now, and I have rarely played or edited history questions written by women. I feel that I don't have much feedback on how women feel about the category in general, and want to get some to help with my future writing work. In my experience, most questions about women's history fall into one of these groups:
  1. "Great Women" (famous historical figures like Catherine the Great, Harriet Tubman, etc)
  2. Women's daily lives and work
  3. Women's rights (i.e. suffrage, abortion rights, etc)
  4. History written by women (like the Alexiad or more recent scholarship not necessarily about women's history)
I wanted to ask specifically women and people who identify as female about what they would like to see from the history category. Are there any particular types of questions or subjects that come up too often or too rarely? And are there any subjects besides the ones I've listed above that should be included? I would like to hear from you even if you do not consider yourself a history player or specialist.
Tejas Raje
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meebles127
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Re: Writing Women's History

Post by meebles127 »

Does quizbowl talk about Henrietta Lacks?
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Halinaxus
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Re: Writing Women's History

Post by Halinaxus »

meebles127 wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 6:33 pm Does quizbowl talk about Henrietta Lacks?
Yes. I can't speak for college quiz bowl, but I've heard her come up more than once at the high school level.
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Tejas
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Re: Writing Women's History

Post by Tejas »

meebles127 wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 6:33 pm Does quizbowl talk about Henrietta Lacks?
Yes though typically in the context of science or science history.
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thebluehawk1
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Re: Writing Women's History

Post by thebluehawk1 »

This reminds me of how historians structure chapters about women's history in general. I've always had a dislike for when authors include a "women" chapter in there book. This often happens in textbooks when the writer basically just does the same sort of narrative and then says "oh and now lets see what women were up to." This can result in thinking women's history is some other thing, rather than remembering women are in fact always present in histories.

I find much more compelling are books which integrate women within the entire narrative of the book. I could see a similar strategy taken when writing tossups. Perhaps a better approach is weaving clues on women in a given event, institution, or period rather than have a quota of women's history questions. A key theme in the history of gender is to understand that gender is relational. Our questions would become more academically, and I think more generally interesting if we take a more integrated approach.
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Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!!
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Re: Writing Women's History

Post by Krik? Krik?! KRIIIIK!!! »

The one thing I'd like to contribute to this discussion is a reminder for writers to be cognizant in how they write about sensitive topics. There's a lot of awful things that have happened in history - particularly in how women have been treated over time. While it's important to have these things come up to recognize their importance, writers should avoid gratuitous descriptions of these events - they don't really add anything to the gettability of the question and are often uncomfortable to read or play for.

I'd rather not echo the above posts in length, but women's history should be across the entirety of your history clues and answerlines - not just relegated to 1/1. I especially challenge writers to vary from the "great person" style of writing about women. Frankly, describing gender norms in different societies around time is tough since it's not cohesive to the "named clues" knowledge that quizbowl is based around. The complexities of gender identity are hard to meaningfully explore in the limitations of play - though I do think this can be done by cluing books or authors or finding creative waves to tie in things which are related to these ideas.

I think the best questions are those that reward how women as a whole at a point in time thought, interacted with society, what they believed their role was, how they made money and supported a family, etc. There's a lot of room here to explore, and writers need to perhaps get a bit more creative with their answer and clue selection to explore this topic further.
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