Karen Offen is a historian and independent scholar whose work delves into the history of Modern Europe, with a particular focus on France and its global reach. Her scholarship examines Western thought and politics through the lens of family, gender, and the relative status of women. She also explores historiography, the history of women, and comparative history. Her research illuminates the national, regional, and global histories of feminism.
Debates around the 'woman question' originated in France in the late Middle Ages, and Karen Offen here offers a panoramic account of changing ideas of who women were and should be, and what they should be restrained from doing, from the fifteenth to the late nineteenth century.
The book delves into the intense discussions surrounding women's rights and roles during the French Third Republic. It provides a thorough reconstruction and analysis of the debates that defined this era, highlighting the social, political, and cultural factors at play. By examining various perspectives, the work sheds light on the complexities of gender issues and the impact of these discussions on French society.
This is the second book in a two-part collection of 264 primary source documents from the Enlightenment to 1950 chronicling the public debate that raged in Europe and America over the role of women in Western society. The present volume looks at the period from 1880 to 1950. The central issues--motherhood, women's legal position in the family, equality of the sexes, the effect on social stability of women's education and labor--extended to women the struggle by men for personal and political liberty. These issues were political, economic, and religious dynamite. They exploded in debates of philosophers, political theorists, scientists, novelists, and religious and political leaders. This collection emphasizes the debate by juxtaposing prevailing and dissenting points of view at given historical moments (e.g. Madame de Staël vs. Rousseau, Eleanor Marx vs. Pope Leo XIII, Strindberg vs. Ibsen, Simone de Beauvoir vs. Margaret Mead). Each section is preceded by a contextual headnote pinpointing the documents significance. Many of the documents have been translated into English for the first time.