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The introduction to this book accomplishes several ends. First, the introduction presents an overview of the book and the issues that will be addressed in it. The introduction especially speaks to how we might understand how discourse, or “talk,” about women functions within medieval Tantric texts: how this talk confines and defines notions of women's subjectivity, and with this, women's ability, or not, to speak and, finally, the implication of women's bodies in their speech. Second, a preliminary introduction to the Sanskrit sources used for this study are offered here, with a brief discussion of the elements these texts have in common. Third, the introduction lays out the theoretical issues at stake in examining women's roles in Tantra. Particular attention is given to understanding the implications of this study for contemporary feminist theorizing of gender.

I argue that in terms of both language and function, the White Monastery becomes a monastic family that replaces, in an idealized form, the families the monks are to have renounced. The use of kinship language allows Shenoute to stress egalitarian relationships, where all monks including Shenoute are “brethren,” even as he also uses particularly female metaphors of childbirth and infertility to define the proper monastic life. In addition, Shenoute's use of familial imagery allows him to create a genealogy that traces the monks’ “ancestry” to past biblical figures. I then move to an investigation of points of comparison between the Egyptian family and the monastery – that both provide food, clothing, shelter, and emotional support – to show how the family was a model for the monastery. Of particular importance is the shared expectation that the women's role in both was to provide clothing, thus allowing gendered, indeed patriarchal, aspects of the nonmonastic family to affect the monastery.

This chapter, based on over 1,000 letters of petition or suitors' letters, outlines the range of patronage suits made by women, contributing to the re-examination of women's political roles in early modern England. Focusing on women's rhetorical and epistolary skills in petitioning for favour, this chapter examines the kinds of strategies employed by women in their letters of petition that are distinct from men's letters: tropes of female weakness and fragility for strategic effect; emphasis of the plight of widows; and the duty of wives, mothers and kinswomen to intervene on behalf of family and friends. Moreover, it posits a distinctly ‘feminine’ mode of petitioning — a ‘scripted’ female voice that could be appropriated by both men and women. It is argued that correspondence of this nature indicates women's easy familiarity in using a language of patronage and ‘political friendship’, suggestive of the confidence and authority with which women operated as patrons and intermediaries.

This chapter examines some of the roles of women in early medieval Byzantine society. It follows three particular avenues of approach, devised as a means of identifying the positions, activity, and authority of women in Byzantine society. The first is to pick up chance references to female activity in the sources written by men, especially those that occur spontaneously in narratives unconnected with women, incidental remarks, and stray observations. The second seeks to document the ingenuity with which women exercised their limited legal rights and is therefore dependent upon the case law that survives—the Peira (Teaching) of Eustathios Romaios is the outstanding example. The third approach attempts to outline the significance of ecclesiastical institutions and Christian beliefs for women, an area in which female subjectivity is perhaps most closely revealed. The overall aim of these avenues is to illuminate a practical reality rather than a legal ideal.

This chapter examines the role of female characters in the two legends, and the implications which this had regarding the inclusion of women in the contemporary British state. In particular, it looks into the complexities as they related to the role of women as members of the British nation in an era in which they did not enjoy full rights of citizenship. Much recent literary scholarship has focused upon the misogynist attitude which the Arthurian legend displays towards its female characters in the nineteenth century. Guinevere, for example, came to function as the scapegoat for Camelot's downfall. The legend of Robin Hood, however, demonstrates that Victorian attitudes towards women were not always so one-dimensional. Nineteenth-century authors treated Maid Marian as an extremely positive female character, despite her failure to conform to traditional gender roles.

This chapter notes that sex difference provided an important basis for division of labour, and this was true for all the castes. Among all castes, the kitchen was a recognized sphere of feminine activity, but the extent of participation in a man's traditional occupation varied from caste to caste, and household to household. Generally, women from the richest households and the highest castes remained confined to their homes while women from the poorest households and lowest castes worked outside for cash wages. It was the male head of the household who carried out the traditional caste occupation—be it agriculture, smithy, trade, or priesthood. Meanwhile, sex was regarded as a natural urge just like hunger. It is said in Rampura that no ordinary man could control his sexual urge except perhaps for brief periods.

This chapter develops Chapter Two's discussion of the social nature of time to consider whether women's bodies and/or social roles give rise to a specifically female ‘time culture’ and, if so, the place of such ‘women's time’ in patriarchal capitalist societies. It rejects any claim that ‘women's time’ and ‘men's time’ can be seen as closed and exclusive categories. However, the chapter agrees with those writers who argue that women's traditional roles and responsibilities give rise to temporal rhythms and needs that are often in conflict with the logic of commodified clock time to which they are often forced to conform. It also finds that the inappropriate imposition of clock time on caring work and relationships can be damaging and counter-productive.

This chapter explores the changing role of women in Wadi Allaqi and gender relations. While men's lives have continued to be focused around the grazing and marketing of sheep, and hence they continue to follow an extensive spatial pattern, women no longer pursue this nomadic lifestyle and instead remain around the shores of Lake Nasser throughout the year, moving short distances only to follow the seasonal movement of the lakeshore. One of the most noticeable outcomes of this sedentarization has been the introduction of agriculture, initially on a small scale and run by women, but on an increasingly large scale and now involving the entire household. This, plus the increasing amount of contact between the Bedouin and outside communities who have come to Wadi Allaqi along the new asphalt road to fish, mine, and farm, has meant the appearance of different opportunities for men and women and this has thus changed, sometimes quite subtly, the nature of gender relations.

This chapter examines the roles of women as architects and agents of social change in the environmentally degraded Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Oil revenues account for the majority of Nigeria’s GDP, yet the Niger Delta is among the least developed and improved regions of Nigeria. Efforts by women at all levels have led to a slow but growing awareness that real solutions to the environmental and social crisis must explicitly address how a violent, corrupt oil economy has impacted women’s roles as caregivers and providers in the household and in society, and the need for women to play a central role in public decision-making and reforms.

This chapter analyzes the rhetoric of debates over women’s suffrage from the 1890s through 1918, when some women were granted the parliamentary franchise in England. Shifts in women’s public roles corresponded to the changing representations of female sexuality and women’s gender roles in the early twentieth century. The chapter focuses on various groups of suffrage agitators, and the ramifications of their rhetoric and actions on constructions of female gender or sexuality. Beginning with antisuffrage representations, it next examines moderate suffragists and then radical suffragettes, and concludes with a reading of Virginia Woolf’s novel of Edwardian struggle, Night and Day. It argues that debates over women’s suffrage produced complexly feminine and masculine “public women”; that the “domestic” of the public/private dualism is always produced in reference or relation to that other dualism of domestic/imperial; and, finally, that such debates illustrate the historic and representational stakes of contests over citizenship, gender, and sexuality in the British public sphere.

Though service in the military traditionally has been a masculine endeavor, women have played important roles in the military throughout history. In the United States, women have participated in every war. In this chapter, we consider the history of women’s service in the U.S. military, which has increased dramatically over time. We analyze the reasons for the changes in women’s participation in the armed forces. Enabling factors, those that can set the stage for increases in women’s military participation, include changes in gender norms relating to family and labor force participation. Driving factors, such as legislative or judicial decree or changes in military needs, can quickly reshape women’s military roles. We use this framework to describe the historical changes in women’s service in the U.S. military, including an in-depth discussion of the roles of women in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Scotland's inter-war working-class constituency has been identified with a powerful class awareness that was expressed in extreme militancy immediately before, during and in the years after the First World War. Such was the extent of the militancy that it has generated a debate over the country's radical and ‘revolutionary’ potential. However, in Scottish labour historiography that story has been and remains a masculine narrative. This chapter subverts that narrative by highlighting how working-class women's experiences of everyday life politicised them. Women's roles as moral guardians of home, family and community provided a basis for coalitions, especially where economic conditions threatened their identities as good household managers, but they also expressed a class awareness that was interlinked to their gender identities.

This chapter discusses Women’s Role in Planned Economy (1938) in contrast with First Five-Year Plan (1951) and Second Five-Year Plan (1930). Women’s Role in Planned Economy reveals the contours of a feminist modernity. It categorized the women into two subjects—to be developed and those that will do the developing—and charted a new relationship between the elites and the masses. On the other hand, the two five year plans categorized women only as mothers or as victims. The chapter presents Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and Mehboob Khan’s Mother India to examine how both works refashion the icon “Mother India” into the figure of the self-sacrificing peasant mother.

This chapter argues that southern women participated more actively in the slave South’s public culture than we have realized and that those experiences are crucial in understanding changes in women’s roles after the Civil War. The chapter tells the story of women—not just plantation mistresses but also enslaved women, free black women, and white women of poor to modest means—who were constrained, but not immobilized, by the patriarchal order. These women were crucial in creating and regulating social relationships and customary norms that were central in governing the public order in the antebellum period.

This chapter first considers changes in sexual attitudes and conduct, and a shift in the role of women. It then turns to changes in childhood and the evolution of public welfare and health, before moving to old age and death. The concluding section evaluates claims that the changes discussed threatened the family's very existence.

This chapter focuses on women’s military roles in France’s attempts to colonize Canada and Acadia. It argues that political and religious officials in New France were more likely than their counterparts in New England to incorporate women’s social rank into their understanding of those women’s martial activities. Elite French and some Indigenous women were seen as performing roles similar to those of a lady defending a castle or a woman of high rank acting as a diplomat. (Prominent examples include Madeleine de Verchères, Jeanne Mance, and Marie de l’Incarnation.) Jesuit and Ursuline missionaries’ accounts of nonelite French and (allied) Native women more often described those women as informally joining battles with the blessing of their husband or God.

This chapter details the role of women in the war effort. Although the military dangers of the Civil War fell largely on northern men, the Union war effort depended on the enthusiastic labors and support of women. Northern women of all sorts—both in fact and in fictional portrayals—navigated the war years as individuals who assessed situations, responded to events, formulated opinions, and made decisions. Much as the antebellum literature provided prescriptive advice on how to behave, the wartime print culture offered guidance about proper gendered behavior for both women and men. Here again the wartime conversation shifted from peacetime prescriptions as the mix of women’s roles to be contemplated now included the role of the patriotic citizen in a new war culture.