Rethinking the Gender of Politics

Abstract: This article advocates for scholars to reimagine and reframe our gendered understandings of politics. Rather than presuming that the normative “politics” was masculine in the early republic, historians should recenter our analyses around women’s political power and activism. In demarcating “women’s politics” as something separate from “politics” (presumed to be dominated and controlled by men), scholars tacitly accept patriarchal frameworks of political power—in history and in contemporary life—and likewise minimize or undermine its potency. Instead, scholars should strive for analytical parity in gendered analyses of political history for a more equitable and holistic understanding of political power in the era of the early American republic.