The Concept of Gender in the Czech Rural History and Historiography

Abstract

The opening of state frontiers after 1989 brought a considerable widening of horizons to the Czech historiography. Among the research trends which experienced the fastest upswing were also gender studies, although they were particularly oriented on women’s history. Monographs dedicated to the 19th century women, which were published at the turn of the millennia, were targeted at a wider spectrum of readers and they won a strong response from outside the narrow community of experts.1 The interest in cultural history of women and the development of women’s movement were supported by the first published Czech translations.2 The demand for these topics was reflected in the offer of public lectures,3 publishing of new professional and popularising books, and in the amount of student theses dedicated to various aspects of women’s history in the past. The period of feverish research into women’s history culminated at the end of the first decade of the 21st century with publication of a representative collective monograph about women in the Czech lands from the Middle Ages until the 20th century.4 The French concept of the cultural history of women,5 which was introduced into the Czech milieu by Milena Lenderová in the 1990s, already partly cleared the way for a more modern concept of gender history, and the chronological interpretation was replaced by thematic complexes. The incoming