Waving goodbye to history? A response to Keith Jenkins

In response to Purvis and Weatherill, Penelope Corfield reiterates her contention that some women's history is broadening fruitfully into gender history. It is ironic that some feminists should express disapproval of the trend and the nomenclature, when modern feminism itself pioneered the identification of 'gender' as a social construct. But, whatever the polemics, the quest for a separate 'herstory' has been quietly abandoned. Feminist though is now notably multi-faceted and the definition of who is or is not a feminist is highly subjective. Hence it is not plausible to subdivide the field into Purvis and Weatherill's putative categories of feminist history (best), women's history (generally good) and gender history (contaminated). Furthermore, knowledge in general is too pluralistic and interactive to be split into a separate malestream (bad) and femalestream (good). Hence and ecumenical gender history now analyses both women's history and/or men's history, and the changing relationship between them.