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History from Below: Women's Movement
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Women constitute a powerful social group that was largely ignored in the standard historical texts before the 1950s. In the mid-20th century, an approach dubbed as "history from below", emerged by influential feminist figures in the US and Europe which sought to re-discover women's role in the history and highlight their status in historical events. Standard historical texts, referred by most feminists as the "history from above", have generally ignored women's role in historical events, and women were largely absent in contexts which reviewed major developments throughout history. Since the 1950s, historical literature in the world has undergone serious modifications and revisions, and the feminist movement and the "history from below" approach have been mingled in some overlapping areas to produce the "women's history from below".
Beginning in the 19th century through the 1950s, the feminist movement in the US and Europe was predominated by higher class and socially advantaged female figures, ignoring racial and ethnic minorities as well as less economically advantaged classes.
It was not until the post-World War I era that western feminist movements and academic bodies took into account women from the minority ethnic groups and less privileged or ordinary social classes, and produced a wealth of literature about their lives and the role they played in varied aspects of history.
This later led to establishment of a new academic major known as "Women's Studies" in the West where numerous books and works emerged afterwards. The literature prompted historians to highlight the lower layers of the society and look at the historical events from the eyes of the ordinary or middle-class females: nurses, witches, women workers, farmers and midwives.
Later on, the "history from below" approach led to occasionally outstanding historical literature known as "micro-history" which considers the history of a specific object or device like the history of combs, the history of pots and dishes, the history of cosmetics, the history of tomato, the history of abortion, the history of religious covers, the history of women's football and so on.
Micro-history can be divided into local, national and global histories. For instance, the history of combs can be regarded as the history of combs in Khuzestan from Ilamites until the present time, which is a local view to the history of combs. Combs can also be considered throughout a whole nation or even the world.
Western academicians and thinkers have created numerous invaluable works themed at "history from below", history of ordinary women and micro-history; however, in Iran the field has been widely overlooked by wits inside the country. In the past two decades, a few Iranian researchers from outside of the country have conducted detailed studies in the field and have considered micro-historical topics like the history of women workers in Iran, the history of hijab in Iran, and the history of women delinquents and have had them published by some of the world's universities.
Now the question that still remains to be answered is: "Are approaches like history from below, micro-history and women's movement able to tackle the 8-year Iraq-imposed war on Iran and cover historical events about the issue from a methodical, scientific point of view?"
The answer is yes, indeed; there are presently hundreds of pure, first-hand topics about the war that have long been overlooked by Iranian historians, academicians, researchers and cultural anthropologists.
Here are some topics that can be considered in historical studies:
1. The state of sales women in war-stricken rural and urban markets
2. The educational status of war-stricken girls and migrants and their difficulties
3. Assessment of the individual, emotional and social status of nurses at Taleghani hospital during the 34 days of resistance in the southwestern city of Khoramshahr.
4. Sales women in Kofaisheh neighborhood in the southwestern city of Abadan during the Sacred Defense
5. The oral history, films and pictures of the clothing and garments of women in the cities of Abadan and Khorramshahr
6. Women directly assaulted by enemy troopers
7. Emotional interactions between comrades and nurses and girls in war-torn cities which led to their marriage
8. Iranian families during the 8-year war
9. Women delinquents in big cities like Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz
10. Nurturing children without their fathers during the war
11. Difficulties of the wives of injured veterans
12. Official historiography of women during the war
13. The view of lonely women in war-torn cities
14. Social and psychological pressures on the young widows who lost their husbands in the war
15. People's contributions to the war fronts
16. How families reacted to hearing the news about losing the loved ones and how their funerals and ceremonies were held
17. The history of women comrades
18. The history of injured women comrades
19. The history of captured women comrades
20. The psychological disorders of women during the imposed war based on medical and oral history accounts
21. Case study of injured women in bombardment of civilian regions
22. Assessment of women's pictures during the war
23. How the Islamic Republic of Iran's Broadcasting showed women during the war
24. Women's say in Iranian media during the war
25. The role of Iranian women in the Sacred Defense cinema
26. Alternative thinking women and the imposed war
27. How poets focused on the war women
28. Hardships of mothers and wives of martyrs
29. Military trainings for women
30. Wills by the wives of martyrs
31. Zahra (Salamollah Alayha) as viewed by martyrs
By Seyyed Ghasem Yahusseini
Translated by Abbas Hajihashemi
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