The Treatment of Women in Immigration History: A Call for Change [with Comments and
Response]
Author(s): Sydney Stahl Weinberg, Donna Gabaccia, Hasia R. Diner and Maxine Schwartz Seller
Source: Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Summer, 1992), pp. 25-69
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Immigration & Ethnic History Society
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Forum
The Treatment
of Women
Immigration
in
History:
A Call For Change
SYDNEY STAHLWEINBERG
THE
and impover
STUDY OF immigration
history has been distorted
to life in the
ished by the omission
of women's
roles in the transition
in immigration
in
United States. This essay traces how changes
history
women
recent years have affected
in books about ethnic
the treatment of
that settled in the United
It considers
States by the mid-1920s.
rather than those dealing specifi
of immigrant groups generally,
in the hope that creating a new framework
for under
cally with women,
lives might
lead to a more balanced picture of immi
standing women's
now
than
observed
grant society
prevails.1 Ten years ago, Carl Degler
groups
studies
that the women's
longer be
movement
had made
in American
it clear
that women
and this statement
could
no
is as true in
ignored
history,2
as
areas of social history. Yet one must
in
other
and
ethnic
immigration
have
how
been
the field as a whole
included, and whether
they
question
to the study of women's
that femi
reflects the approaches
experiences
in history and anthropology.
im
Perhaps most
pioneered
we
women
must
to
what
increased
ask
difference
attention
portant,
might
make in our image of immigrant culture as a whole.
nist
scholars
In a review
of a book
about a woman's
life as a political
prisoner
in a
du Plessix Grey
it is
why
suggested
prison camp, Francine
men
as
as
to consider women's
to
well
those
of
experiences
of how a society operates.3 Although
all the
achieve a true understanding
women
in the "Small Zone," as it was called, were political
prisoners,
their manner
of coping differed vastly from those of the men whose
Russian
essential
of Soviet prison camps. In
have shaped our perceptions
Gulag memoirs
about escape,
solved
the scant "leisure" of the camps, men fantasized
on the
and talked incessantly
of politics. The women,
chess problems,
on bring
concentrated
although
they were also intellectuals,
into
their
drab
and
otherwise
lives.
spent
spartan
They
ing ceremony
other hand,
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Journal of American
26
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
to create
for one another's
and managed
birthdays,
preparing
an embroidered
skirt out of an old sheet, or a cake with oil and
weeks
?
gifts
flour obtained
with
rated their midsummer
difficulty.
dinner
and men
lar situation, women
This memoir
explains what
fifteen
rituals and deco
They observed
religious
table with wildflowers.
Faced with a simi
in strikingly different ways.
feminist scholars meant when
they wrote,
that "the writing
of women
into history necessarily
years
reacted
ago,
and enlarging
traditional notions of historical
redefining
sig
as well as pub
to
nificance,
encompass
personal,
subjective
experience
. Such a
lic and political
activities...
methodology
implies not only a
new history of women,
but also a new history."4 History written with
involves
men's
lives
assumed
to be
the norm, with
women's
sub
experiences
or
sumed under those of men, narrowly categorized,
omitted altogether.
not
This approach presents a distorted
of
women's
image
simply
history,
in general,
but of history
and this is the status of much of immigration
history today.
When
Oscar
Handlin wrote his pathbreaking
history of immigration,
a new edition was published
in 1951, and even when
The Uprooted,
in
was
women
to
"the
assumed
be
and
the
role
of
1973,
male,
immigrant"
treated in a few pages.5 As with most histories of the period, the history
of men was considered
to deal
it unnecessary
gender neutral, making
with
women
fact, among
the majority
in any area apart from a brief passage
In
about families.
the earliest major nineteenth-century
the Irish,
immigrants,
were
or
to
female, but women's
experiences
approaches
their lives were
not treated at all.6 This was
historians
the predominant
view among
the mid-1970s
the
fact
that since
(despite
men
to the United States).7
than
have emigrated
until
immigration
the 1930s, more women
The original reason for the omission
immigration
differences
more
is not hard
to understand.
of women
All
in historical
societies
have
between
significant
roles and have treated male
gender
than female ones.8 Historians
have explored
studies
of
recognized
as
activities
the so-called
and until fairly recently only elite
by men,
"public sphere"
were confined
women
to the domestic
that
while
within
groups
sphere,
inves
realm of home and family which was not the subject of historical
women
enter
to
the
labor
when
left
the
home
force, take
tigation. Only
dominated
or work
to secure suffrage did their
part in strikes, join organizations,
even become part of the public record and accessible
to tradi
activities
Itwas the male role in that public world ?
tional historical methodology.
church and politics ?that
the realm of work,
activities,
organizational
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27
Forum
and many who come
how a culture worked.
Handlin
standing
to be the model
after assumed
for under
more
it could expand
before
interdisciplinary
to
and begin
conception
integrate women.
beyond this compartmentalized
the societal roles
Over fifty years ago, anthropologists
began examining
History
had to become
of women
have
thropologists
problems
an
and more
feminist
of cultures,
recently,
some of the
this subject further in identifying
For ex
the contribution
of women.9
evaluating
in their studies
involved
taken
with
ample, in a pioneering
and Louise
Lamphere
of articles edited by Michelle
Rosaldo
Jane Collier wrote
in the early 1970s,
of the
as
were
a
as
to do,
not
historians
unified whole,
only beginning
family
arena in which women
to achieve
but as a political
specific
attempted
household
other
sometimes
members.10
by manipulating
goals,
a number of studies
have written
Since then, feminist anthropologists
of immigrant and ethnic women,
upon work and fam
focusing mainly
collection
not only as males
perceived
they have portrayed women
as
in
viewed
but
themselves.11
them,
They have shown that women
they
own
their
created
barred from men's
activities,
societies, while
many
ily,
in which
of their position.
the limitations
and power within
lead
followed
Collier's
by integrating public
Lamphere
example,
in women's
lives to explain changes
and private aspects of women's
to
Working Mothers,
patterns of paid labor. In From Working Daughters
in a New England
industrial community,
her study of immigrant women
forms
of satisfaction
For
analyzed women's
in work
and change
that women's
issue of the ways
Lamphere
variation
ception of their role.12
Other anthropologists
ing" for ethnic women.
to deal with
in their marriages
time. She thus raised the
strategies
behavior
over
workplace
activities
reflected
their con
the importance
of "network
emphasized
in Transforming
the Past: Tradi
For example,
has
tion and Kinship
Americans,
among Japanese
Sylvia Yanagisako
on
in
kin
networks
her
work
idea
of
"women-centered"
the
explored
American
women.13
first and second generation
Yanagisako
Japanese
that helped
and attitudinal changes
the interaction of historical
showed
new
in particular, created
cultural forms and symbols
explain how women,
to California ?changes
which
their own children erro
after emigrating
from Japan. In a
to
been
cultural
have
assumed
importations
neously
and
the
in
families
of
black
area, Family
Kin, Carol Stack
Chicago
study
women
for
schemes
devised
how poor
demonstrated
self-help by creating
extensive
networks
have
of kin and friends
that traded and exchanged
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goods,
Journal of American
28
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
and child care.14 This cooperative
resources,
services,
support system
women
to create a sense of community
enabled otherwise
impoverished
to improve
and sometimes
their lives materially.
More
in
recently,
Women's
Work
and Chicano
and work-related
Families,
networks
Patricia
Zavella
wrote
of the kin
among
cannery workers
friendship
in the Santa Clara Valley
that were central to their social lives.15
In The Varieties
Micaela
diLeonardo
has also
of Ethnic Experience,
focused
what
upon
she calls
create extended
the way women
families
by examining
an Italian commu
the "kinship work" of women within
nity in California.
adds
diLeonardo
extended
Chicana
in the home and the labor market,
Apart from work
?
this third category
which
describes
how women
get
have charge of ritual
together for holiday celebrations,
like birthdays,
decide upon visits,
the giving of presents,
this work of kinship,
diLeonardo
shows us women
exploring
families
observances
etc. By
bonds that reach beyond nuclear families. Her ethnic house
establishing
as
holds are not isolated units linked only through such formal devices
or
are
as
but
connected
well
ties
churches,
organizations
through kinship
that women
This
maintain.16
domestic
Stack, and diLeonardo,
among
the creation
and maintenance
domain explored by Yanagisako,
others, represents a significant
aspect of
of ethnic communities,
albeit one un
examined
of immigration.
the connections
Furthermore,
by historians
between workplace
and home ? or between public and private spheres ?
as Zavella and Lamphere
are gener
by such anthropologists
emphasized
in immigration history.
ally not considered
The insights of these anthropologists
have not been applied univer
even
own
within
their
As Marilyn
Strathorn
however,
sally,
discipline.
as simply the
view feminist
observed, most anthropologists
scholarship
?
women
or
?one
of
among many
study
gender
possible
specialties
as a
rather than an approach
that should affect
the study of society
are so much
And what
is true among anthropologists,
who
whole.17
more
aware
of nuances
the fact
ans, despite
the past fifteen
during
Although
methodology
what might
in different
that immigration
years.
boundaries
disciplinary
and information,
be called "ethnic
societies,
history
true of histori
is doubly
itself has changed greatly
tend to inhibit
the transmission
of
in the past decade or so, practitioners
of
to learn from one
studies" have begun
have faded. The
techniques. As a result, some earlier conflicts
class as the major determi
struggle between historians who emphasized
nant of an immigrant's
and those who believed
successful
acculturation
another's
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Forum
29
was
culture
more
into what might
blended
be
important has mostly
school of thinking.18 Olivier Zunz, for example,
has
to consider
the possibility
that culture and class
historians
a contextual
called
encouraged
upon an immigrant population
like industrialization.19
Historical
may
impact differently
external societal forces
the quantifying
have merged
a
context
with
and sociologists
historical
Ewa Morawska
phers
of Eastern
depending
upon
like
sociologists
of demogra
techniques
to give us a rich picture
in Johnstown,
European
immigrants
Pennsylvania.
According
to Morawska,
historical
try to "account for the relationships
sociologists
as it evolves
in
actions and the social environment
between
people's
their everyday
is thus molded
lives."20 The world view of immigrants
by
in their native land, the conditions where
their prior existence
they settled
in this country, and the networks
and ambience of the immigrant organi
zations they created.
In similar
sociologists
demands made
other historians
Hareven
historians
fashion,
to show
have
like John Bodnar
of
the interaction
by America's
or historical
industrial
sociologists
have
borrowed
from
the immigrant
the
family with
Bodnar
and
system.21 Like Zunz,
like Josef Barton or Tamara K.
that ethnicity
is not simply
anthropologists
but fre
from the country of immigration,
to the circumstances
of settlement.22
Immigrants
learned
from
carried
"cultural
baggage"
quently owes as much
a dynamic
in the demands of
thus become
force, not simply acquiescing
as much
an industrial society, but shaping their immediate circumstances
as they were able, to fit their needs. This perception
to
also owes much
the insights
of E.P. Thompson,
who,
Class,
emphasized
English Working
into a class.23
themselves
This
shift
in his classic
the ability
in emphasis has enabled historians
to history ? women
than a footnote
thing more
ars were greatly affected
the late 1960s, remained
However,
connect
with
The Making
of the
to "make"
of workers
to view women
in families.
as some
These
schol
until
of family history, which,
by the explosion
and sociologists.
the preserve of anthropologists
the enormous
sought to
growth of social history, which
with major historical
transformations,24
everyday
experiences
too began to take an interest in families as important agents of
historians
sim
that time, as Ellen Ross observed,
social change.25 Until
of
account
not
"the overwhelming
take into
power
family feeling
ply did
historians
and ties,"26 and underestimated
impetus to the inclusion
most
the family
economy
explored
upon society. What gave the
in history was
the concept of
Scott and Louise
Joan W.
Tilly,27
their effect
of families
by
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Journal of American
30
which
connected
the workings
Ethnic History
of the family with
/ Summer
the external
1992
world
of
developing
capitalism.
came to agree upon the importance
social historians
of the
Thus,
and
kin
in
of
networks
the
effect
industrial
economy
family
mediating
no longer simply
society upon the individual. Ordinary
people were
acted upon by forces beyond
their control, but actors able to affect their
own lives and create new cultures.28 Working-class
in the late
households
century were now seen as part of a larger economic
picture
resources were
to cope with
combined
the requirements
of the
to
twen
Zunz
in
has
tried
that
the
demonstrate
early
system.29
capitalist
tieth century the immigrant family changed from this type of unit, rely
nineteenth
where
ing on income pooling
structure
for individual
to a support
the family as a whole,
Both
this interpretation
and
to benefit
achievements.30
rest on the conception
that the late nineteenth-century
corollary
and aspi
shared benefits
family was an organic whole whose members
Zunz's
rations.
this perspective,
However,
emphasizing
family, does not address the different effects
the unity
of family
of
the
immigrant
policies on wives,
on sons, on daughters. Age, gender and generation mattered.
For despite
the interests of the family in acting as a unit to deal with
the capitalist
decisions
did not necessarily
of the house
affect all members
economy,
or
hold equally,
and tensions
conflict
could arise over decisions
that
seemed
to require more
be sent to school
sacrifice
from
some members
than others.
Sons
longer than daughters, who went out to work;
might
so that a wife
children of both sexes might
be removed
from school
In Labour and Love, Lynn Jamieson
would not have to find wage work.
sons kept their income and paid mothers
room and board,
were
to
their
entire
pay checks and re
daughters
expected
give
a
were
in
small allowance
ceive
return.31 Sons
individual
permitted more
than
and
the
benefits
of
the
often
economy
daughters,
expression
family
discusses
how
while
were
Tamara Hareven,
for example,
recorded
the
unevenly.
in New England mill
towns
of young women
and wives
the possibility
of education.32 My own work on Jewish families
distributed
resentment
denied
the sacrifices made
has highlighted
their younger siblings.33
benefited
Itwas not historians of the family,
by older
immigrant
children
that
but women's
historians who began
to investigate
than a working
the family as something more complex
unit. Until the past decade, even feminist scholars seldom studied women
in the family except as members
of organized
groups or as part of an
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31
Forum
But
concerns.34
entity with mutual
have
demonstrated
women's
history
held
attitudes
Like
men.35
have
shown
in recent
that women
of
years, practitioners
within
families
often
them from
in activities
that differentiate
engaged
Jane Collier's
article in the early 1970s, they
pathbreaking
in the best
made
that family decisions were not necessarily
and
of social history, Zunz
One of the purposes
to
the rhetoric of har
is
hidden behind
expose "the conflicts
the family as it is
and this purpose
is as important in viewing
with
the industrial
of
Laborers'
confrontation
aspects
society.
of all members.36
interests
suggests,
mony,"37
for other
in the workplace
the home.
also affected relationships within
has been ne
This
less harmonious
life, however,
aspect of family
in most
have been subsumed
social history: women
usually
glected
order
roles within
little consideration
of their distinctive
"family" with
or outside the home.38 As Joan Scott has observed, much of social history
sex and gender
to the institution of
life, relegating
compartmentalizes
under
the family, rather than viewing
them as basic aspects of social organiza
in society.39 Family generally
of difference
tion creating hierarchies
has
as
a
whole with
little distinction
made
its parts.
been treated
among
or different attitudes towards, for example,
among its members,
This view tends
the treatment of children, have seldom been considered.
to obscure
in which
functioned
and changed
the context
family patterns
Conflicts
the importance
by denying
and the influence
members
to society of relationships
they have on one another.
between
family
history has incorporated many of these attitudes of social
Immigration
the research
that has been done on women,
and despite
the
history,
the
issues Handlin
and other early writers
remain
focus
of
emphasized
a
Handlin's
of
male
historians
image
immigrant
immigration
generally.
and lacking a familial support group
coming alone, disoriented,
passive,
the mediating
effects of kin,
has given way to an interpretation
stressing
of
But the
the
and
and
groups.
immigrant
strengths
adaptability
family,
source material
to enable
of immigrant history has not changed enough
historians
to see beyond
the categories
of discourse
that were
shaped
earlier.
Bodnar, while challenging Handlin's
the immigrant
does not
experience,
histo
in his treatment of women. Although
differ from him significantly
that in the late nineteenth
have demonstrated
rians of women
century, a
as
the
middle
Bodnar
culture
existed
classes,40
among
separate female
for example,
In The Transplanted,
on the disruptive
nature of
thesis
sumes
that women
of the working
classes
always
shared common
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
values
Journal of American
32
and
their men.
interests with
also suggests
that of Handlin
ences
of male
immigrants
focus in most
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
of his chapter structure to
similarity
that Bodnar generally
the experi
explored
were
as
those of women
and assumed
they
The
to
in relationship
is largely on men
chapters
as
the
social
and
home
church,
wage
subjects
earning,
mobility,
is a continuation
of a similar approach
in an earlier
This
ownership.
The
well.41
such
that Bodnar wrote with Michael Weber
and
of Their Own
a
women
are
from
brief
here
mention
and
Simon.42
there,
Apart
Roger
as
as
twice:
of
families
and
discussed
workers.
part
only
Even when historians
borrow methodology
from sociologists
and in
book,
Lives
clude women
in their statistics,
of their
they often fail to ask questions
context.
that might place gender
roles in a more meaningful
to Farmers,43
in From Peasants
For example,
Jon Gjerde,
includes
women
in his analysis of Norwegian
immigrants. He discusses
courtship,
nature
the
of
women's
farm work,
their use of En
fertility,
changing
in societies
such as the Ladies Aid. We
learn about
glish, and activities
materials
created by a new sexual division
of farm labor: men
changes
more power since Norwegian
women's
traditional work ?caring
now non-paying
the
kitchen
mals,
housekeeping,
gardens ?was
men's
altered
women
gained
for ani
while
earned money.44 But we are not told how these changes
of women's
roles and status, either by men, or by the
perceptions
themselves.45
farm work
In Gary Mormino
and George
ians and their Latin
Pozzetta's
study of Ital
of Ybor City46
the growth
showing
prize-winning
in The Immigrant World
neighbors
a fascinating
and colorful montage
of an unusual multicultural
of Spaniards, Cubans
community
consisting
and Italians. Yet once again, the role of women
is slighted. Although
the authors
create
over 70 percent of the Italian immigrants were married,
fewer than one
were
the
authors'
interviews
with
and
of
women,
many of the
quarter
have engaged
them do not seem to have been ad
issues that would
a chapter
to the
and Pozzetta
devote
example, Mormino
but we do
of life in Ybor City in its first days of settlement,
difficulties
a
not learn how women
in
must
made
home
have
and
what
coped
dressed.
For
an inhospitable
environment.
the
raise ques
book, the authors, perhaps
inadvertently,
Throughout
that they do not follow up. A fine section
tions about the lives of women
on Italian women
in the tobacco factories
left
working
(men generally
seemed
the factories
for other
they often made
more
employment)
than
money
mentions
in passing
the fact
But Mormino
their husbands.
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that
and
Forum
33
Pozzetta
leave unexplored
how this unusual
not
learn whether,
family life. We do
affected
they developed
are five pages
reversal
of traditional
roles
since many women worked,
to care for children. There
of kin or neighbors
of sports on immigrant
networks
on the effects
(male) culture,
on neighborhood
or women's
We
read that
nothing
relationships.
first settlers valued their children's work above education,
especially
as
more
the
Italians
wanted
education
Then,
girls.
prospered,
they
their children, but it is unclear whether
What
hints we get about women's
this meant
had a different
but, again, these
In For Bread
attitude
with
in the lives
changes
Butter,
of Eastern
for
for
as boys.47
example,
chaperoning
tied inwith ethnic identity, grand
Italian ? speaks to the function of
towards
issues are hinted
girls
the
roles ?for
in the 1920s, cooking foods
daughters
mothers
their grandchildren
teaching
as upholders
women
and symbols of cultural
have
as well
but
values.
the church
They also seem to
than their husbands,
at rather than explored.
also documents
Morawska
European women
in terms
have meant
what
this might
analyzing
status. For example, we read of the value women's
canning,
family by taking in boarders,
sewing
types of home work, but it remains unclear what
immigrants
of women's
significant
without
role or
labors brought
and performing
to the
other
effect
this activity had
the subordi
discusses
in altering family relations. Similarly, Morawska
nate position of women
in Eastern Europe without
subsequently
explain
seems
or
to have altered
in this country. The only
it
how
why
ing
attitudes was mention
of the fact that second
indication of changing
generation
women
women's
Magyar
in male
positions
were
societies
into leadership positions
of Slavic and
whereas
the
interwar
these
during
period,
were dominated
men.
Al
by first-generation
absorbed
societies
in the 1920s and
founded
the majority
of organizations
though women
in terms
this may have meant
about what
1930s, there is no speculation
women
other
is
of women's
status, particularly
among
pointed out
(it
to male
leaders were often married
that women
leaders), apart from the
comment
in women's
"the positions
that possibly
a source of power
in the immigrant
considered
is what
this statement
about
unexamined
suggests
societies
were
not
Left
community."48
the relationships
be
what women
thought
women
tween first-generation
and their daughters,
in
their attitudes towards acculturation,
of their own authority,
changes
even
status
and
between
old
and
women's
new,
country
signifi
perhaps
cant differences
between
the attitudes of first generation men and women.
The
books
examined
in this essay
are not unique
in the treatment
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of
Journal of American
34
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
can be seen in
other examples
of male-biased
distortion
gender. Many
recent histories
of Irish, Jewish, Polish and Asian
immigrant groups.49
the
of Irish women
very different
immigrants
Although
experiences
were amply documented
in 1983 in Hasia Diner's Erin's Daughters
in
Jewish women's
lives have been explored
in several books,
America,
and a number of monographs
have considered
the lives of Asian
immi
histories
of
these
seldom
the
groups
grant women,50
general
incorporate
of this scholarship.
perceptions
The picture we get of women's
lives from most
studies
is limited
women
as work
to consider
indeed. It is entirely appropriate
immigrant
ers and as part of families,
since the vast majority were
in fact married.51
to these two
But most
limit coverage
histories
of women
immigration
rigidly conceived.
categories,
They do not extend their area of research
to: (1) the connections
between work and home life, the domestic
and
in
context
women-centered
activities
the
performed
public spheres; (2)
of household
world ?the
or neighborhood;
satisfactions
it could
their realm.
authority within
we
not
do
learn about
Thus,
see
socialize
themselves,
they
hood
create
and
(3) women's
offer and the way
the texture
of women's
lives:
of
their
achieve
how
did
their children,
in neighbor
participate
establish
sex-linked
ties and
relationships,
life, maintain
kinship
their own sense of values
men
small
within
home
we
businesses,
operated
or how
in these enterprises,
played
labor affected
family relations.53 When women
immigrant
their wives
perception
they could
and neighborhood?52
do not learn what
If
role
this demanding
form of
crusaded
for causes as
as temperance or urban sewage disposal,
their activities are seldom
into
studies
of
of
political
immigration
incorporated
history.54 Historians
a
as
too
"Women's
often view
spe
History"
particular
immigration
varied
the story of men. Immigrant women
cialty, while "History" stays mainly
remain in a ghetto of their own.
in immigration
of women
is even less justifiable
This "ghettoization"
than in other branches
of history where men held recognized
and women
appeared to hold none. Most
immigrants came to the
and had to create their own forms of authority
States powerless,
the limited sphere that was under their control in
and satisfaction within
an urban, industrial society. Both men and women
had to adjust to a life
studies
power
United
in this country that made different demands upon them than those they
were accustomed
to before emigrating. However,
most
his
immigration
ex
forms
All
torians have considered
men's
of
the
books
only
coping.55
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35
Forum
in this essay demonstrate
how male
immigrants derived dignity
from their position within
their ethnic milieu,
but they
women
same
context. Men's
to view
in the
religious organizations
amined
and fulfillment
fail
but little
and priests are discussed,
or auxiliaries.
women's
associations
appears about nuns and
of
male
interest, like poli
Subjects
but not neighborhood
and kin networks,
tics and sports, are considered,
in women's
bailiwick.
Thus historians,
which were
probably
largely
aware
of
of
assumed
traditional
forms
without
it,
patriarchal
being
if anything
and values, and shaped their research to conform with those
As Ellen DuBois
and Gail Kelly have observed, we remain
assumptions.
that male
and
faced with "the tenacity of the presumption
experience
dominance
and exhaustive."
There
points of view are universal
that "archaic
of truth in their assertion
interpretive
old
to keep
rusty gates
out all that we
now
know
is more
than a grain
act like
frameworks
about women's
his
tory."56
the pattern set by anthro
need not follow
immigration
and consider
"women's
field
history" simply an "additional"
pologists
? an
It
"real
of
the
would
be
unfor
for investigation
appendage
thing."
tunate if women's
remained
the subjects of isolated mono
experiences
Historians
of
into the analytic framework
of immi
being incorporated
graphs without
as
in the field have recently warned.57
The
scholars
research,
gration
we
use
to
to
the
framework
include
and
is
thus
gender
enlarge
challenge
a meaningful
inclusion
of women's
that prevent
assumptions
in immigration
history.
included? First, by
roles be more
How might women's
adequately
and
that has pre
division
between
work
home
the
artificial
eliminating
correct
roles
an understanding
of the interrelationship
between
"public" and
Leonore
in
Davidoff
and
Hall's
For
Catherine
example,
"private" places.
vented
Family
mestic
Fortunes:
Men
and Women
the do
Class,
of the English Middle
for
about
of
writing
point
investigation
as women.59 Most historians have assumed that
is seen as a central
sphere
the history of men, as well
affairs are carried outside a familial
men's
to make a living in industrialized
need was
how "autonomous"
demonstrate,
however,
context,
society.
and that their only
and Hall
Davidoff
were
entrepreneurs
depen
and their wives'
and
from their kin networks
dowries
dent on financing
how
considerations
in
and
the
family
family enterprise,
participation
career choices. They contend
that many men were as
influenced men's
and
values as by those of the marketplace,
much motivated
by domestic
that these values,
in turn, helped
shape
economic
development.
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Their
Journal of American
36
Ethnic History
1992
/ Summer
in the assumption
that one can understand
the shortcomings
a culture by exploring
the public lives and discourse of men alone.59
we
can
more
learn
lives by creating
about women's
new,
Second,
more flexible
to
consider
their
of work,
perceptions
family
categories
work
shows
In a critique of The Transplanted,
and kinship.
Donna
life, neighborhood
one
to
cannot
We
this
Gabaccia
way
suggests
accomplish
objective.60
she argues, without
understand how the family functioned,
investigating
lives within
the home and neighborhood,
and learning about
women's
In addition, more must
and consumption.
as childbearing,
activities
home-centered
to the
for they are intimately connected
and housekeeping,
budgets, marketplace
about
be learned
childrearing
outside world.
behavior
such
Perhaps most
important, we must attempt to comprehend
their roles in household
and community.61
how wives
Some
perceived
how women
used informal forms of
feminist
scholars have explored
au
to sway other women
and the men who held recognized
more
the community.62
be learned about the actual
Can
thority within
of this power with a subtle analysis of the role women
mechanics
played
in decision-making?
influence
the role of women
in their
reassessing
to
scholars of the mentalities
cultural his
approach
on the individual,
and
have ques
family,
community,
precedent
Ample
own milieu.
French
exists
tory, by focusing
tioned the assumptions
previously
them have
attributed
explored
for
of
social
to women
the lives
and
economic
dominance
amarginal
position in society.63
and culture of village women
that have
Several
of
in such
a
to consider not only the technical
future historians
way as to encourage
and symbols
the sexes, but also the values
of chores between
division
have their own percep
it. They point out that if women
that accompany
that help the community
tion of social order, if they perform functions
'some' power." How,
to death, "they obviously
have
sexes function? How
the
difference
between
the
does
ask,
from birth
these
scholars
does
to the other?"
each sex "represent and redefine itself and its relationship
The same questions might profitably be applied to immigration
history.
one might
still ask what
Even
if the answers were easily accessible,
of American
in our understanding
difference
immigra
they would make
has been to
generally. A major concern of social historians
a
in an earlier time.64 Similarly,
the "mind sets" of people
women
to
how
has
better
understand
scholars
been
feminist
major goal of
the assumption
that women's
their world, without making
comprehend
tion history
reconstruct
status changed
in tandem with
that of men.65
Joan Scott
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has challenged
37
Forum
between men and
the validity of a history that accepts a fixed distinction
to
in which poli
and
advises
feminist
historians
women,
"analyze ways
be
tics construct
However,
gender and gender constructs
politics."66
cause
most
historians
of
standard
to the
yet to add gender
and class, they have yet to ex
in culture or the "mind set" of women
in
immigration
of ethnicity
analytic concepts
plore either the role of gender
different societies.
An
of
important consequence
to
understand
inability
significant
ignoring
of historians, we
created
and kin networks,
In the work
whole.
borhood
have
aspects
seldom
this "mind
set" may
be
an
as a
of
society
immigrant
learn about informal neigh
or maintained
and the
by women,
of immigrant communities.
Yet
they had upon the establishment
done mainly by feminist anthropologists
has encouraged
schol
ars to reassess the value placed on such aspects of women's
lives previ
recent
As
noted
in
women's
considered
earlier,
years,
ously
"private."
effects
research
have questioned whether
private and public can be considered
on
at
all
the
basis
that politics
is grounded
in, and in
"separate spheres"
turn shapes social arrangements.
The boundaries
of "separate
spheres"
historians
have
decon
required constant
repair.67 Applying
some
to
in
result
inter
techniques
immigration history might
commu
in
historical
of
the
lives
of
changes
perception
immigrant
often
shifted
and
structionist
esting
nities.68
to gender might
shed new light on the relation between
a new dimension
to the culture of
and
thus
add
and
private
public
in Family
and Hall have demonstrated,
life. Indeed, Davidoff
everyday
how the system of gender worked, more
that by investigating
Fortunes,
can be understood
It could help explain
about the lives of men as well.
Attention
the economic
connections
between
women,
than wage work.
and the mar
their families,
For example, what were the
inways other
ket economy
links that enabled
informal kin and neighborhood
to mount
and
with
1902,
great speed
efficiency,
sher meat
1904
and
influence
Jewish
housewives
in
a boycott
against Ko
or to lead rent strikes in
dealers who had raised their prices;69
on a neighborhood
level to fight the
1908; or to organize
sense of com
of Jewish gangsters?70
These Jewish women's
defined entity
differed
from the male-dominated,
institutionally
munity
use
most
The
historians
of
of
considered
by
immigration.
gender once
between
and
into
the
calls
distinction
"private"
question
"public"
again
of the conception
of community.
and points the way towards a broadening
women's
of
their familial
Historians
also examine
might
perception
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Journal of American
38
roles
to explore
elusive
differences
Ethnic History
in acculturation
second-generation
immigrants. Writing
be out of favor among
may presently
as Zunz suggested,
indeed paradoxical,
/ Summer
between
first-
1992
and
about
the assimilation
process
?
it is
although
that such scholars downplay
the
social
historians
role of ethnicity
in American
life after stressing
the cultural
indepen
?
dence of minorities71
but few recent studies investigate
in depth differ
ences
between
and their children.
Pozzetta
has
immigrants
Recently,
to study the second gen
for scholars of Italian immigration
eration to understand
how immigrant culture was passed on, and in what
a gap exists
in the current writing
form.72 Obviously
of immigration
For
the
books
assert
in
this
discussed
that immi
history.
essay
example,
families
their
confrontation
with
grant
gradually
adjusted during
capital
also called
culture, but they tell us little about how this process
took place. Nor
is there evidence
in any of them whether
the second
concern
shared
the
for
generation
overriding
family solidarity.73
The roles played by mothers might help in explaining
these attitudinal
ism and American
differences
the immigrant generation
and their children. How
of
socialization
within
the
for
home,
might patterns
example, have shaped
the aspirations
of second-generation
children? My own research has led
me to see immigrant mothers
as facilitators
in their attempt to mediate
to retain many of the old ways and a child wants
when a father wishes
to
between
be a "real American."74
For most
the function of such
immigrant groups,
in easing
strife
in determining
and, perhaps,
intergenerational
as upward mobility
living patterns and habits of consumption
gave a
a
in
choice
matters
such
to
has
be
These
issues
yet
family
may
explored.
across
prove an important clue in understanding
patterns of acculturation
women
generations.
to immigrant
and in
societies,
approach
as
an
a
small
but
number
concept,
cluding gender
analytical
increasing
of historians have shown, without
the male role or the political
slighting
the important part immigrant and ethnic women
have played
in
context,
By
altering
the traditional
or adapting the native culture of their group to the demands
maintaining
of the United
States.75 In studies of different
societies, Vir
immigrant
Donna
Sarah
SJ.
Gabaccia,
Deutsch,
ginia Yans-McLaughlin,
Kleinberg,
Judith Smith and Laura Anker have demonstrated
how women's
lives
and aspirations
differed
affected
responsibilities
a primary responsibility
ing group
from
those of men; how gender, age and family
within
and how women
bore
families;
behavior
for adapting
Old World
traits and thus preserv
culture.76
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Forum
39
of
Several
bonds
these historians
in cementing
the family
have
concentrated
economy.
on
the role of kinship
years ago, in Family and
that the role of
demonstrated
Fifteen
Community.
Virginia
Yans-McLaughlin
women
in kin networks was crucial in both
of culture
maintenance
Italian
and the
the family economy
re
in
More
Buffalo.77
immigrants
among
in examinations
cently, Judith Smith and Laura Anker,
and Rhode
Island immigrant communities,
have shown
of Connecticut
the importance
ties or creating new ones in neigh
borhoods?thus
for the essential
support systems
organizing
family
over
across
for families
and,
time, redefining
economy,
responsibilities
a
new meaning
to the word ethnicity.
lines and giving
household
of women
in sustaining
old kinship
in the im
has been differences
major area of investigation
on
men
women
of
and
the
of
urbanization
and
process
pact
immigration
to Elizabeth
In From Sicily
of the same ethnic group.
Street, Donna
Another
how housing patterns in a Sicilian neighborhood
the lives of wives,
ideals, but restricted
dissatisfaction
in those patterns. Conversely,
in
whose
led to changes
more
recent
her
in
Lon
Jamaica
Jamaican migrants
Farewell,
study of
has shown how, after emigrating,
don, Nancy Foner, an anthropologist,
Gabaccia
in New
has explained
fulfilled
York
male
women
to break with traditional patterns, while men
gained the freedom
a more constricted way of life.78
in her study of immigrant
and ethnic working-class
SJ. Kleinberg,
on the
in Pittsburgh,
families
The Shadow of theMills,
also concentrates
suffered
different
of urbanization
effects
She
explains
women's
work
and industrialization
the
inter-relationship
in the home, which
of men's
on men
and women.
in steel mills
jobs
men to labor
with
long hours in
"rested
she
states,
economy,"
"Pittsburgh's
as much upon these unpaid services as it did upon the work of the men
in the mills.'79
describe men's
Just as historians of immigration generally
the mills.
modern
enabled
industrial
industrial work, Kleinberg
explores in detail the many aspects of women's
from
labor,
clothing, which
required hauling heavy
washing
buckets from the hydrant on the street, to caring for children or cooking
domestic
for boarders.
But
she goes
beyond
to explain how, as indus
description
removed husbands
and children from
and mandatory
schooling
for long periods of the day, women's
work became even more
to the home. Because men and women were
confined
leading increas
as easily
create
their
needs
could
conflict
ingly separate lives,
disparate
trialism
the home
as harmony. Kleinberg's
effects of industrialization
study calls for a fresh look at the differing
on men and women
in immigrant families.
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Ethnic History
Journal of American
40
/ Summer
1992
so
a pathbreaking
study of Mexican-Hispanic
Separate Refuge,
on the Southwest
the ma
has documented
frontier, Sarah Deutsch
InNo
ciety
jor role women
regional
the New
in maintaining
played
until the policies
community,
Deal
undermined
the 1930s, when
men were
were
the culture
and structure
of
the
of the federal government
during
that before
discovered
their position. Deutsch
often away doing migrant
labor, these women
in the
culture
of Hispanic
for the survival
largely responsible
their visiting,
their
of the Southwest.
dominant Anglo milieu
"Through
most
and
their
of
food,...
stability,
childbearing,
important,
sharing
women
for increas
and earnings as non-migrants,
provided
production
not only subsistence,
and networks
but continuity
villagers
ingly mobile
for community,
health, and child care, for old age and emotional
sup
? as
owners
tasks
But
this
function
who
could
property
perform
port."80
ser
reserved for men, as well as communal work and religious
usually
vices?was
tried to
agencies, who
or
into proper housewives
servants, the posi
Itwas a change
in
envisioned
them.
society
to missionaries
alien
women
transform Hispanic
the dominant
tions in which
and New
Deal
that was respon
role of women,
Deutsch
this stabilizing
demonstrates,
in the villages.
sible for the erosion of the culture that they maintained
had filled in southwestern
this important function women
By showing
of
work
implicitly calls for a r??valuation
Hispanic
villages, Deutsch's
or
in
the
of
culture
the role ethnic women
play
maintaining
changing
a
of
the
illustrates
their group. It also, parenthetically,
striking example
of which
social construction
of gender
roles, a process
immigration
usually seem unaware.
to
for historians
few examples
present a compelling
argument
women
on
the process of immigration
take a fresh look at the effect of
made by anthropologists
has
been
and acculturation.
progress
Although
historians
These
to uti
of immigration
it is time for historians
historians,
to explore
and
culture
their methods
and perceptions
immigrant
our
of what
is historically
significant
conception
society. By expanding
and women's
lize
as well as the complex web
to include gender and the roles of women,
a society, a deeper level of understanding
can be
of relationships within
ethnic groups confronted,
in which
added to the ways
adapted to, and
in
recreate
this
the
life
found
country.
they
ultimately
helped
NOTES
1. Other
women
in
in
scholars
immigration
immigration
See,
history.
studies
for
have
example,
written
Silvia
of
the marginality
"Women
Pedraza,
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of
and
41
Forum
Migration: The Social Consequences of Gender," Annual Review of Sociology, 17
(1991): 303-325; Betty Bergland, "Immigration History and the Gendered Subject:
A Review Essay," Ethnic Forum, vol. 8, no. 2 (1988), pp. 24-39; Suzanne Simke,
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
"A Historiography of Immigrant Women
Ethnic
Centuries,"
vol.
Forum,
9,
no.
1-2
(1989),
122-45;
pp.
Donna
Gabaccia,
"Immigrant Women: Nowhere At Home," Journal of American Ethnic History, 10
(Summer 1991): 61-87; Maxine Seller, "Beyond the Stereotype: A New Look at
the ImmigrantWoman, 1880-1924," Journal of Ethnic Studies, 3 (Spring 1975): 59
68.
2.
Carl
"What
Degler,
the Women's
Movement
Has
Done
to American
His
in the Academy: The Difference It Makes, ed.
tory," in A Feminist Perspective
Elizabeth Langland andWalter Gove (Chicago, 1983), p. 70.
3. Francine du Plessix Grey, "Sisterhood in the Small Zone," review of Irina
Ratushinskaya, Grey Is the Color of Hope (New York, 1988), The New York Times
Book Review, 30 October 1988.
4. Ann D. Gordon, Mary Jo Buhle, and Nancy Shrom Dye, "The Problem of
Women's History," inLiberating Women's History, ed. Bernice Carroll (Urbana, 111.,
1976), p. 89. On this point, see also, Joan Kelly, "The Doubled Vision of Feminist
Theory," Feminist Studies, 6, 2 (Summer 1979): 216-27: Jane Flax, "Postmodernism
and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory," Signs, 12, 4 (Summer 1987): 621-43.
5. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, (Boston, 1973), ch. 9. Handlin was criticized
mainly for his assertion that the immigration experience was widely disruptive, and
for his generalities. See, for example, Rudolph Vecoli, "Contadini in Chicago: A
Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of American History, 51 (December 1964): 404
417.
6. See, for example, Handlin, Boston's
Mass.,
7.
1941).
See Marion
F. Houstoun,
Roger
G.
Immigrants,
Kramer,
1790-1865
Joan M..
and
(Cambridge,
Barrett,
"Female
Predominance of Immigration to the United States Since 1930: A First Look,"
International Migration Review, 18 (Winter 1984): 908-963.
8. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "Woman, Culture and Society: A Theoretical
Overview," in Woman, Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and
Louise Lamphere, (Stanford, Calif., 1974), pp. 18-19.
and Lamphere,
Woman,
for example,
9. Rosaldo
99-100.
32,
Culture
31
and Society,
esp. pp. 8-9,
passim,
an
on women's
how
emphasis
demonstrated
Rosaldo,
maternal role led to an opposition between "public" roles, inhabited by men, and
domestic roles inhabited by women, who therefore lack access to the authority,
prestige
and
cultural
that are
value
the prerogatives
of men.
10. Jane Fishburn Collier, "Women in Politics," inWoman, Culture and Society,
pp. 89-97. This approach to anthropology owed much to Clifford Geertz, who in
his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), urged anthropologists to ob
serve
11.
the symbolic
For example,
Experience:
of Ethnic
cans
N.Y.,
(Ithaca,
content
of behavior.
see Micaela
the most
The Varieties
recent,
diLeonardo,
and Gender
Italian-Ameri
Class
among
California
Kinship,
Patricia
Work
Families:
Women's
and Chicano
Zavella,
1984);
among
Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987); Louise Lamphere,
From Working Daughters toWorking Mothers: Immigrant Women in aNew England
Industrial Community (Ithaca, N.Y., 1987).
12.
Lamphere,
From
Working
Daughters
to Working
Mothers,
pp.
17, 27.
13. Sylvia Yanagisako, Transforming the Past: Tradition and Kinship Among
Japanese Americans (Stanford, Calif., 1985).
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
42 Journal of American
Ethnic History
1992
/ Summer
14. Carol Stack, Family and Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community
(New York, 1975), pp. 9, 28, 32.
15.
Women's
Zavella,
Work
and Chicano
Families.
16. Micaela diLeonardo, "The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women,
Families, and theWork of Kinship," Signs, 12 (Spring 1987): 440-53. See also The
Varieties of Ethnic Experience: Kinship, Class and Gender among California Italian
Americans
(Ithaca,
N.Y.,
1984).
17. Marilyn Strathorn, "An Awkward Relationship: The Case of Feminism and
Anthropology," Signs, 12 (Winter 1987): 276-92. Nonfeminist anthropologists often
their own
sexual
stereotypes
through
to write
and continue
about
ethnic
women
view
informants
of women
perspectives
in men's
with
dealings
as
see themselves
they
men."
See also Jane M.
or
the eyes of their male
through
without
the
groups
incorporating
rather
than "what women
represent
Atkinson,
Essay," Signs, 8 (Winter 1982): 245, 253.
These disagreements also reflect differences
a
view
from
society
a more
consider
they
and
the perspective
view.
objective
its
Thus,
of women's
the perceptions
the domain
exclusively
integrated
almost
of
of women
Review
"Anthropology:
among anthropologists who
inhabitants
and
those
who
try to
prefer what
not absorbed
in general
has
anthropology
remains
view
and the feminist
studies,
scholars
who
study women
immigrants.
18. John Higham, "Current Trends in the Study of Ethnicity in the United
States," Journal of American Ethnic History, 2 (Fall 1982): 5-15.
19. Olivier Zunz, The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial
Development, and Immigrants inDetroit, 1880-1920 (Chicago, 1982); see also Zunz,
"American History and the Changing Meaning of Assimilation," Journal of Ameri
can Ethnic History, 4 (Spring 1985): 53-72.
20. Ewa Morawska, For Bread with Butter: The Life-Worlds of East Central
Europeans inJohnstown, Pennsylvania, 1890-1940 (New York, 1985), p. 6.
21. John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America
(Bloomington, Ind., 1985), p. xvii.
22. See Olivier Zunz, Reliving the Past: The Worlds of Social History (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1985), p. 85; See also Bodnar, "Immigrants, Kinship, and the Rise of
Working-Class Realism in Industrial America," Journal of Social History, 14 (Fall
1980): 59.
23. E.P. Thompson, TheMaking of theEnglish Working Class (New York, 1966),
p. 9.
24. See Zunz, Reliving
ever,
was
sition
mostly
concerned
the Past, pp. 5-6. Much
?
with
demographics
of early family history, how
fertility
rates,
household
compo
, etc.
25. See Mary Ryan, "The Explosion of Family History," Reviews inAmerican
10 (December 1982): 181-92. Ryan wrote, "Family transitions ... are
History,
critical historical junctures, moments rife with the possibility of change even as
they link the past to the future."
26.
Ibid., p. 181.
p.
183.
27. Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, "Women's Work and the Family inNineteenth
Century Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17 (1975): 36-64;
Scott and Tilly, Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978).
on Recent
28. See Lawrence Levine, "The Unpredictable Past: Reflections
American Historiography," American Historical Review, 94 (June 1989): 672.
29.
Kindling
30.
See
Bodnar,
The
Zunz,
Reliving
Ellen
Transplanted;
in the Groves of Academe
the Past,
C. DuBois
et al, Feminist
(Urbana, 111.,1985), p. 85.
p. 72.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Scholarship:
43
Forum
31. Lynn Jamieson, "Limited Resources and Limiting Conventions: Working
Class Mothers and Daughters inUrban Scotland, 1890-1925," in Labour and Love,
ed. James Lewis (London, 1986): pp. 49-69.
32.
Hareven
Tamara
and Randolph
Amoskeag:
Langenbach,
Life
and Work
in
An American Factory City (New York, 1978), pp. 267-68.
33. Sydney Stahl Weinberg, The World of Our Mothers: The Lives of Jewish
Immigrant Women (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988). See also "Longing to Learn: The
Education of Jewish Immigrant Women inNew York City, 1900-1934," Journal of
American Ethnic History, 8 (Spring 1989): 108-126.
34.
DuBois
35.
One
et al., Feminist
the formative
of
pp. 181, 188.
Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg's
Scholarship,
was
studies
"The
Female
in Nineteenth-Century
World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women
America," Signs, 1 (Autumn 1975): 1-29.
36. Heidi Hartman, "The family as the locus of gender, class and political
struggle: The example of housework," Signs, 6 (Spring, 1981): 366-94; Louise Tilly
and Miriam Cohen, "Does the family have a history? A review of theory and
practice in family history," Social Science History, 6 (1982): 131-179. Interestingly,
Micaela
diLeonardo
nians
of
feuds
and
in her anthropological
research
Califor
discovered,
among
were more
to discuss
that women
than men
ancestry,
willing
family
to repeat
statements
crises. Men
tended
formulaic
asserting
family
unity.
Italian
See Di Leonardo, "The Female World of Cards and Holidays," p. 444.
37. Zunz, Reliving thePast, p. 76.
38. Rayna Rapp, Ellen Ross, Renate Bridenthal, "Examining Family History,"
Feminist Studies, 5 (Spring 1979): 175,188.
39. Scott also challenges the validity of a history that assumes a fixed distinc
tion
between
which
men
and women,
construct
politics
gender
and
advises
and gender
feminist
to "analyze
in
ways
and
Scott, Gender
historians
constructs
politics."
See
thePolitics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 6, 10,16-17.
40. See, for example, Carol Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and
Ritual: Relations Between Women inNineteenth Century America," Signs, 1 (Au
tumn 1975): 1-29.
41.
See
critique
of Bodnar
in Donna
Gabaccia,
"The
Women
Transplanted:
and
Family in Immigrant America," Social Science History 12:3 (Fall 1988): 244-246.
42. John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael P. Weber, Lives of Their Own:
Blacks, Italians and Poles inPittsburgh, 1900-1960 (Urbana, 111.,1982).
43.
Jon
Gjerde,
From
to Farmers:
Peasants
The Migration
from
Balestrand,
Norway, to the Upper Middle West (New York, 1984).
44. Ibid., pp. 195, 200, 211, passim.
45. In fairness to Gjerde, we seldom learn how men thought either: what we
learn iswhat they did.
46. Gary Mormino and George Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City:
Italians
47.
48.
and
their Latin
Ibid.,
pp.
Morawska,
in Tampa,
Neighbors
1885-1985
(Urbana,
111., 1987).
288-290.
For
Bread
with
Butter,
pp.
174,
232,
292.
49. For example, Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (New York, 1985);
Arthur Hertzberg, The Jews inAmerica (New York, 1989); John J. Bukowczyk, And
My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish -Americans (Bloomington,
Ind., 1987); Roger Daniels, Asian America (Seattle, 1988); In The Chinese Experi
ence
in America
(Bloomington,
only peripherally.
Only Ronald Takaki,
Ind.,
1986),
Shih-shan
Henry
Tsai
includes
in Strangers from A Different Shore: A History
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women
of Asian
Ethnic History
44 Journal of American
/ Summer
1992
Americans (Boston, 1989) makes a serious attempt to include women's perceptions
of their lives and of the effect women had upon the different Asian immigrant
cultures. Like Daniels and Tsai, Takaki discusses the Chinese in America as a
basically male society, but he then goes back to China to explain the role of women
in Chinese culture and why they might not have wanted to emigrate even had this
path been open to them. He compares the effect upon the lives of the American
Chinese of not having a family life with those of the Chinese immigrants inHawaii,
where women were included and family life was possible.
50. Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughters inAmerica (Baltimore, 1983). On Jews, see
C. Baum, P. Hyman and S. Michel, The Jewish Woman in America (New York,
1976); Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, 1820-1929 (New
York, 1985); Weinberg, The World of Our Mothers.
On the Chinese, Chalsa Loo and Paul Ong, "Slaying Demons with a Sewing
Needle: Feminist Issues for Chinatown's Women," Berkeley Journal of Sociology,
vol. 27 (1982); Anne M. Butler, Daughters of Joy, Sisters ofMisery: Prostitutes in
the American West, 1865-90 (Urbana, 111., 1985); Lucie Cheng Hirata, "Free, In
dentured, Enslaved: Chinese Prostitutes inNineteenth-Century America," Signs, 5, 1
in Nine
(Autumn 1979): 3-29; Lucie Cheng Hirata, "Chinese Immigrant Women
teenth-Century California," inWomen of America, A History, ed. Carol Ruth Berkin
and Mary Beth Norton (Boston, 1979), pp. 224-44; Ruthanne Lum McCunn, A
Thousand Pieces of Gold: A Biographical Novel (San Francisco, 1981); Judy Yung,
"'A Bowlful of Tears': Chinese Women Immigrants on Angel Island," Frontiers, 2,
2 (Summer 1977): 41-44.
On the Japanese, in addition to the work of Sylvia Yanagisako (see note 13), see
Evelyn
Nakano
Glenn,
of Wage
"The Dialectics
Work:
Women
Japanese-American
and Domestic Servants, 1905-1940," Feminist Studies, 6, 3 (Fall 1980): 432-71;
Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese
American Women inDomestic Service (Philadelphia, 1986); Yukiko Hanawa, "The
Several Worlds of Issei Women" (M.A. thesis, California State University, Long
Beach, 1982); Yuji Ichioka, "Ameyuki-San: Japanese Prostitutes in Nineteenth
Century America," Amerasia Journal, 4, 1 (1977): 1-21; Yuji Ichioka, "Amerika
Nadeshiko: Japanese Immigrant Women in the United States, 1900-1924," Pacific
Historical Review, 48, 2 (May 1980): 339-57; Valerie Matsumato,
"Japanese
American Women duringWorld War II,"Frontiers, 8,1 (1984): 6-14; Monica Sone,
Nisei Daughter. On Asian-American women, see bibliography compiled by Vicki
Ruiz, inUnequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader inU.S. Women's History, ed. Vicki
Ruiz and Ellen C. DuBois (New York, 1990), pp. 450-52.
51. This point was less true after 1930 when women immigrants began to out
number
men.
in more
men
can
An
argument
context
of a family
be made
than
that
it is also
to view
important
immigrant
is customary.
52. On this point, see Rosaldo, Women, Culture and Society, pp. 8, 36.
53.
Although
there
is a growing
literature
on
the
role
of
immigrant
women
in
small businesses, this information is not included in the general studies. See for
example, Ivan H. Light, Ethnic Enterprise inAmerica: Business and Welfare Among
Chinese, Japanese and Blacks (Berkeley, Calif., 1972); and Edna Bonacich and John
Modell, The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity: Small Business in the Japanese
American Community (Berkeley, Calif., 1980). More recently, in Ivan Light and
Edna
Bonacich's
Immigrant
Entrepreneurs:
Koreans
in Los
Angeles,
1965-1982
(Berkeley, Calif., 1989), women are mentioned only once in the index, and the text
notes that although more than 60 percent of Korean immigrants were women, fewer
women
than men
were
entrepreneurs.
However,
in the conclusion,
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the authors
note
Forum
45
that because so many Korean women work and bear the double burden of wage
work and housework, many families had great problems (p. 431). This point is not,
in the
considered
however,
text.
54. On this point, see Simke, "A Historiography
of Immigrant Women,"
pp.
132-33.
55. As Joan Scott has observed (See Gender and the Politics of History, p. 206,
n32) "There is a difference between describing a society's attribution of status to
particular groups and reflecting that status without comment or ignoring it entirely.
In the first case, the historian takes the construction of inequality as part of the story
to be
in the second,
he
recounted;
removes
inevitable
fact, and, in effect,
or
she accepts
its construction
inequality
from historical
as
a
or
"natural"
consideration."
The only early general study of ethnic history to include women's
roles was
Maxine Seller's To Seek America: A History of Ethnic Life in the United States
(Englewood, N.J., 1977). A new, revised edition has just been published.
56. DuBois et al. Feminist Scholarship, pp. 185-86, 189.
57.
See
"Statement
of Purpose,"
and
Joan
Hoff-Wilson
and Christie
Farnham,
"Editors' Note and Acknowledgements,"
inJournal of Women's History, 1 (Spring
1989): 8,11.
58. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of
the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (Chicago, 111., 1987). Although this book is
not about immigrants or the working class, it still raises valid questions applicable
to immigration history.
59. For an explanation of the importance of this book to literary critics as well
as
see
to historians,
Judith
Newton,
Fortunes:
"Family
'New
and
History'
'New
Historicism," Radical History Review, 43 (1989), pp. 5-22.
60.
"The
Gabaccia,
Women
Transplanted:
Social Science History (1988), pp. 243-252.
61. This is feasible when it is possible
the immigrant group.
62.
B.
Sherry
in Immigrant
Family
America,"
to do oral histories among members
as Nature
to Male
"Is Female
Ortner,
and
is to Culture?"
of
in Women,
Culture and Society, p. 69; Lamphere, "Strategies, Cooperation, and Conflict Among
Women in Domestic Groups," ibid, pp. 99-100; Jane F. Collier, "Women in Poli
89-96.
tics,"
ibid.,
pp.
63. C?cile
Dauphin
et al.,
"Women's
and Women's
Culture
Power:
An
Attempt
at historiography," Journal of Women's History, 1 (Spring, 1989): 66, 68, 83.
64. Scott, Gender and thePolitics ofHistory, pp. 6,10.
65. Joan Kelly-Gadol, "The Social Relations of the Sexes," Signs, 1 (1976): 809
823.
66. Scott, Gender and the Politics ofHistory, pp. 16-17.
67. "Politics cannot be separated from the culture and social arrangements in
which it is grounded and which in turn it shapes." See Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H.
Quataert,
Connecting
in the Western
Women
Spheres:
World,
to the Present
1500
(New York, 1987), p. 102; Scott, Gender and thePolitics ofHistory, pp. 16-17; Linda
Kerber,
"Separate
Women's
68.
Female
Spheres,
Woman's
Worlds,
On
this
point,
see
Simke,
Place:
The
Rhetoric
of
75, 1 (1988): 9-39.
History," Journal of American History,
"A Historiography
of
Immigrant
Women,"
pp.
130-31.
69.
Paula
Hyman,
"Immigrant
Women
and
Consumer
Protest:
The
New
York
City Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902," American Jewish History, 71 (September 1980);
91-105.
70.
Paula
Hyman,
"Culture
and Gender:
Women
in the Immigrant
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Jewish
Com
46 Journal of American
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
munity," in The Legacy of Jewish Immigration, ed. David Berger (New York, 1983),
p. 164. See also Hyman, "Gender and Jewish History," Tikkun (January 1988), pp.
35-38.
71.
72.
the Past,
Reliving
Pozzetta,
"Immigrants
Zunz,
pp. 82, 92.
and Ethnics:
The
ography," Journal of American Ethnic History,
73.
On
see Gabaccia,
this point,
"The
State
of
Italian-American
Histori
9 (Fall 1989): 67-95.
Transplanted,"
p. 248.
74. Weinberg, The World of Our Mothers. See also Weinberg "Jewish Mothers
and Immigrant Daughters: Positive and Negative Role Models," Journal of Ameri
can Ethnic History, 6 (Spring 1987): 39-55.
75.
As
to the specific
opposed
consideration
of women's
lives
alone.
76. Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in
Buffalo, 1880-1939 (Ithaca, N.,Y., 1977); Gabaccia, From Sicily toElizabeth Street:
Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants (Albany, N.Y., 1984); Judith
E. Smith, Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Immigrant Lives in
Providence, Rhode Island, 1900-1940 (Albany, N.Y., 1985); Laura Anker Schwartz,
"Immigrant Voices from Home, Work and Community: Women and Family in the
Migration Process, 1890-1938" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York, Stony
Brook, 1983). For Schwartz, see also "Women, Work and Family: Polish, Italian
and Eastern European Immigrants in Industrial Connecticut, 1890-1940," Polish
Studies (Winter 1989), pp. 23-49, and "Family, Work and Community: Southern and
Eastern European Immigrant Women Speak from the Connecticut Federal Writers'
Project," in Connected Domains, ed. Susan Reverby and Dorothy Healy (Ithaca,
N.Y., forthcoming 1992): SJ. Kleinberg, The Shadow of theMills: Working-Class
Families inPittsburgh, 1870-1907 (Pittsburgh, 1989); Sarah Deutsch, No Separate
Refuge:
Culture,
Class,
and Gender
on an
Anglo-Hispanic
Frontier
in the American
Southwest, 1880-1940 (New York, 1987). Deutsch's study includes both immigrant
women from Mexico and ethnic women of Hispanic descent whose families had
lived in the Southwest for many generations.
77.
See Yans-McLaughlin,
Family
and Community.
78. Nancy Foner, Jamaica Farewell: Jamaican Migrants in London (Berkeley,
Calif., 1978). See also Sylvia Pedraza-Bailey, "Women and Migration: The Social
and Economic Consequences of Gender," unpublished paper, 1989.
79. Kleinberg, The Shadow of theMills, p. 230.
80.
Deutsch,
No
Separate
Refuge,
p. 61.
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Comment:
Donna
Gabaccia
In "The Treatment
A Call for
of Women
in Immigration
History:
a
common
voices
fear
Stahl
among histori
Sydney
Change,"
Weinberg
ans of women ? that women's
will
remain
"the
subjects of
experiences
isolated monographs
without being incorporated
into the analytic frame
Her paper is a clear argument for the integration
called "mainstreaming")
of women
into general
awkwardly
(sometimes
of
life
in
histories
and ethnic group
the United
States. At
immigration
work
of...
the outset
that more
research."
Iwould
like to admit
inclusive
that I share Weinberg's
fears, her belief
are desirable,
and her assumption
not be pursued
from that of
separately
histories
broadly
need
that the study of women
men of similar class and ethnicity. There are, however, many ways
to
Iwould
the study of immigrant and ethnic women.
like to
conceptualize
?
assess
one
to
for
call
try
approach
Weinberg's
mainstreaming
through
to gender
in immigrant families
attention
and communities
situat
?by
current discussions
historians
and immi
among women's
ing it within
so
of
I
historians
about
the
I
futures
their
fields.
do
because
gration
believe
scholars
will
immigrant women
the choices
about making
the female and foreign-born.
the quality of research
become more conscious
on
improve as
they inevita
bly face when studying
that the limited integration of
First, it seems important to emphasize
women
to immigration
into general accounts
is not a problem
unique
concern with
Even
the
whose
and
history.
anthropologists,
approach
so attractive,
see
as
the study of women
a
is
addressing
prob
marginal
topic. Weinberg
lem that extends well beyond
the study of immigration
history or even
the study of history itself.
into general accounts may have been particu
Still, integrating women
finds
gender Weinberg
a special and somewhat
usually
in immigration
and ethnic histories over the last twenty
larly problematic
or
and
it
is
the origins
of problems
so,
years
fairly easy to identify
to
resurgence was
Immigration
history's
particular
immigration
history.
a product
new ethnicity
of the so-called
of the early 1970s.
were
as
in the last twenty years
formulated
studies completed
Many
pot had destroyed
ethnicity.
critiques of an earlier notion that the melting
largely
have amply documented
the creation of ethnic
historians
Immigration
in urban America.
and
their
and
groups
strength
persistence,
particularly
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
48
But
Journal
lay a problem
and women within
therein
of men
of American
for those
Ethnic History
interested
in examining
/ Summer
1992
the relations
ethnic
groups.
on the bonds of ethnic solidarity did not leave much con
Emphasis
or conflicts,
either
ceptual room for the study of intra-group differences
within
the ethnic group or within
the family unit, which was considered
the foundation
of ethnic
cohesiveness.
and
Only recently have conflict
themes. One of the major
contributions
of
diversity
re-emerged
was
con
to
Bodnar's
The
remind
scholars
of
the
synthesis
Transplanted
and internal divisions
tentiousness
(of class, religion and ideology) within
ethnic groups. Although Weinberg
rightly criticizes Bodnar, her critique
as
on his
that we
as
attend to community
conflicts
as solidarity. Weinberg
and the other scholars she cites argue that
we cannot treat the family as an undifferentiated
unit, as Bodnar did; we
must begin to recognize
and analyze gendered
and generational
conflicts
also builds
insistence
well
within
it. To
state
this critique
somewhat
the content of
differently,
not
and
with
class
with
but
ethnicity
only
politics,
gender and
new
as
to
If
well.
the
then
tended
ethnicity
reify ethnicity,
generation
a
in
call
call
for
its
deconstruction.
is,
part,
Weinberg's
we have moved
from the early 1970s.
Obviously,
quite a distance
comes
a
at
with
thus
both women's
time,
essay
Weinberg's
good
history
differs
and immigration history currently in periods of re-assessment.
Both fields
share a sense that an important and relatively coherent
first (or second)
? reached closure. And
wave
of research has ?after
both,
twenty years
as a consequence,
are concerned
or
that will
concepts
paradigms
century. Weinberg
are best assessed
provides
to identify new
shape research
one vision
directions,
methods,
into the twenty-first
of future work; her suggestions
to other options.
through comparison
seem
a new re
women's
historians
closer to establishing
Currently,
historians. At the 1990 Berkshire
search agenda than immigration
Con
ference
on the History
all sessions with
of Women,
a United
States
for example,
focus. One was
two themes
linked almost
a concern with
difference
are now eager to trace how class, race
or diversity. Women's
historians
or the distinctive
as understood
in the
cultures of minorities
(usually
or
Native
States ?e.g.,
United
Latina,
African-American,
Hispanic
and uniting
lives ?both
defined women's
American,
dividing
Asian)
from women's
historians'
them. This
interest marks quite a departure
in defining
the universals
of a unitary female experience;
taken only after years of internal criticism by minority
it is a departure
women.
scholars and students of working-class
earlier concern
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49
Forum
A
second
theme
at the Berkshire
Conference
was
the social
construc
in turn influences gender identity and male/female
tion of gender, which
as a socially
relations. Concern with gender
constructed
(rather than
characteristic
leads scholars either toward studies
natural or biological)
of men
and women
each other, or toward an under
are forged politically
and womanliness
and
standing of how manliness
to
in
historical
This
last
the
study
culturally
particular
settings.
approach
of gender is, of course, most commonly
associated with deconstructionist
methods.
The first is more easily reconciled with social historical meth
and
odology,
in immigration
in interaction
indeed ?as
history
with
Weinberg
by Virginia
notes ?has
already been attempted
Judith Smith, my
Yans-McLaughlin,
self and others.
seem less focused
as we approach
historians
the new
Immigration
case
we
a
in
and
lack
the
of
Berkshire
Confer
any
century,
equivalent
There
is interest in a wide
ence, where
patterns consolidate.
emerging
in immigration
range of new topics and problems
history, but less sense
of one or two burning questions
linking all or most of these. Clearly, we
must move beyond
the 1920s or 1930s in our studies, attend to the new
since 1965, take up the study of the second generation
and
immigration
or
ac
and
readdress
the
issue
of
assimilation
thus, inevitably,
beyond,
seem about to move
culturation.
Other scholars
off into alliance with
as
and demographers
sociologists
or "Atlantic"
from international
pull the study of migration
Bodnar's
book also seems
tackle
to have sparked real concern with compari
the
very least it can be said that, in all these
synthesis.
will
historians
be moving
away from studies of indi
immigration
and ethnic groups
and community
studies ?the
ap
immigrant
son and with
cases,
vidual
the study of migration
to
these
works
perspectives;
promise
out of its usual United
States orientation.
they
proach
favored
At
in the 1970s
seems to have its
(This move
studies
also
dominated
the
community
and
in labor history, where
parallel
last two decades of research.)
1980s.
to make
to their
historians
central
By asking
immigration
gender
two
of
is encouraging
fields
which
have
work, Weinberg
rapprochement
in
Her
interests
makes
their
and
essay
persistently
diverged
approaches.
some very sensible
for recognizing
the centrality of women
suggestions
in the analysis
stand neither
generally
sensibly
of acculturation
until we attend
and generational
change. We will
to family dynamics,
reproductive
in particular.
In this case,
and mothering
new
from
women's
applied
approaches
under
I think, Weinberg
to topics
history
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work
has
that
Journal of American
50
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
in the years ahead.
be of growing concern to immigration
historians
In other ways, however, Weinberg's
look
backward
rather
suggestions
concerns
next
of the
decade. Many of her suggestions
than forward to the
will
women
are strategies
for mainstreaming
into the older paradigm,
e.g.,
as
and
in
communities
studies of individual
such
groups
completed
in the 1970s and 1980s. Weinberg's
essay tells us how
large numbers
we should have been doing family and community
studies for the last
are all valid. But how
twenty years. Her criticisms
likely is it that
in the next
historians
immigration
approach many
studies undertaken
now
sense
will
decade
continue
or revise
an
is exhausted?
Unfortunately,
community
to examine
of gender will
dimensions
specifically
not be the cutting edge of research in immigration
history, even when
new
reveal
information
about
women's
lives.
they
histori
Still, there may be room for such studies. Ironically, women's
ans' interests
in the social construction
of gender could easily justify
of studies of family and community
another generation
among immigrant
and
ethnic
In fact,
groups.
male
United
who
want
best be advised
suggestions,
Weinberg's
eager
history audience
tained
historians
might
to learn how
to follow
to write
of
many
for a women's
gender systems are created, main
or changed.
notions
of proper female or
Culturally
prescribed
to the
did not necessarily
behavior or personality
survive the move
In the case
States.
abandoned
fears
I know
Sicilians
best,
of cuckoldry
with daughterly
in New
York
and wifely
quickly
for an
infidelity
pervasive
concern
and loyalty as the
virginity
equally obsessive
to urban
in response
of family members
lives and responsibility
changed
and industrial life. A carefully designed paper presented by Mary Blewett
at the 1990 Berkshire
ness
of manli
traced the extreme mutability
faced a new
from Lancashire
conference
as textile workers
and womanliness
it demonstrated
and management;
system of factory discipline
women
to pursue interests
used gender expectations
how men and
to their occupational,
class and family positions.
It also seems
could
shed
to me
light on
that a new
the historical
round of family
construction
as well
specific
and community
studies
and transformation
of
is that this process
stereotypes.
gender
specific
(My hunch
ethnically
was intimately related to parallel stereotyping
of immigrant men.) Euro
from symbols of immodesty
transformed
pean immigrant women were
or bad and inadequate mothering
Era)
(in the Progressive
or anti-feminist
love and backward
smother
domesticity
twentieth).
While
these
themes
could
be studied
through
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to symbols of
(in the late
the responses
51
Forum
men
of native-born
a one-sided
and
and women
of cultural
picture
immigrant women
groups
activists
or communities
would
an American
woman
becoming
both ethnic
to the foreign-born,
change. Examination
or the second
provide
a more
(or man)
that would
provide
of the ethnic press
in particular
generation
accurate
contributed
view
of how
to the creation
of
identity and stereotypes.
Scholars who prefer to address issues now surfacing within
immigration
to gender, get less help from Weinberg's
still attending
history, while
is that immigration
historians
unfamiliar
essay. The danger, of course,
and that women
with gender analysis are heading off in new directions,
not find
will
who
scholars
a place in the next round of studies either. In particular,
are pursuing Atlantic
to the
and international
approaches
study of migration
badly need
and a small but growing number
Scholars
groundwork.
to consider
gender. Here,
sociologists,
of anthropologists
have done important
associated with
Immanuel Wallerstein
have ex
of studying women
and households
in the international
plored ways
an
to
division of labor,
the locked puzzle of female migra
important key
tion patterns.1 We also have some fine theoretical works by sociologists
a
on patterns of female migration.2
to abandon
For those unwilling
United
the male
orientation, we need at least to understand why
of the nineteenth
century gave way to the female
migrations
the
twentieth.3
of
Those
eager to study today's
migrations
States
dominated
dominated
from a historical
perspective must keep those female majori
if they are to avoid the problem
that Weinberg
in the study of the female-dominated
of the
Irish migration
immigrants
ties firmly
in mind
identifies
nineteenth
century.4
to conceptualize
there are at least two other ways
the study of
as
to
brief mention
alternatives
women;
they deserve
Finally,
immigrant
historians'
call for
One is to take up women's
suggestions.
women
to difference,
the
of
into
history
integrating
immigrant
a comparative
and cross-cultural
To
of
female
mention
history
diversity.
Weinberg's
attention
it is striking that both immigrant and minority women
just one example,
were stereotyped
as immodest girls and inadequate mothers
in the nine
teenth century, while
in the twentieth century, stereotypes
eth
of white
nic women
or Hispanic-Americans
and African-,
have diverged
Asian-,
in telling ways. As I see it, the stumbling-block
for immigration historians
to contribute
to a multi-cultural
who wish
is
history of female diversity
women's
of European-American
history's
conceptualization
divided only by class. Those of us interested
ity cultures,
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and minor
in the history
Journal
52
of immigration
must work
of American
women
to make
Ethnic History
historians
of race and culture
more
/ Summer
1992
aware of the
if we
are to find a
historically
significance
changing
women
in
the
in
this
literature.
from
nineteenth
Europe
Immigrant
place
not
consider
themselves
neither did
century did
European-Americans;
themselves
bound in racial or cultural unity
perceive
arrivals. Today's
them
immigrant women
rarely consider
or Latinas;
selves Asians,
African-Americans
with
their
they identify
as sources of differences
national origins. In short nativity and nationality
nativists
American
the new
with
within
and across
lines of race, class and religion need consideration.
A
women
to
in
of
American
needs
consider,
part,
history
like European-American,
African-American
and Latino
categories
created, and whether
they really serve the needs of a multi-cultural
multi-cultural
how
were
history
The
of United
second
States women.
? taken
alternative
and 1980s, which
from men ?has
generally
from women's
treated women
been
history
as a distinctive
utilized
of
the 1970s
group, apart
historians.
scarcely
by immigration
and a num
study of Irish immigrant women
Weinberg
praises Diner's
ber of other studies of this type. Yet her essay does not suggest
that this
is the direction
historians
should take in the years ahead. I
immigration
wondered
the study
why. Perhaps with immigration historians abandoning
now
in
individual
and
with
women's
historians
interested
groups
on
at all for a monograph
there would be no audience
other approaches
Polish women,
say, or Cambodians?
of
I think
this. Can
the question
for students
of
immigrant women
the one outlined
integrative
strategies?either
I prefer), or the writing of a multi-cultural
? succeed
without more solid research
essay (which
States women
is essentially
in Weinberg's
history of United
on women
of par
the
stages here
skip
in particular
settings? Can we simply
as "old fashioned" women's
history and "old fashioned"
answer
to that question. As my
I do not know the
history?
immigration
comment
I
will
that
the
of
suggests,
suspect
immigrant women
study
ticular groups
characterized
to
proceed on many fronts at once, and that each approach will continue
can
thank
We
of
audience
and
pose tough problems
Sydney
publication.
us with both an eloquent justification
for study
for providing
Weinberg
to debate the alternatives.
and for the opportunity
ing immigrant women
If we
now may make conscious
choices
among
and
communication
should
be
the
result.
clarity
those
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options,
greater
Forum
53
NOTES
1. Joan
Immanuel
Smith,
and theWorld Economy
2. Mirjana
Migration
rently
Morokvasic,
and Hans-Dieter
"Birds
of
a review
on
essay
eds.,
. . .
are also Women
Passage
the
Evers,
Households
1984).
18 (Winter 1984): 886-907;
Review,
preparing
Wallerstein
(Beverly Hills, Calif.,
that will
topic
," International
Sylvia Pedraza-Bailey
in Annual
appear
is also cur
Review
of
Sociology.
3. Marion
et al.,
Houstoun
"Female
of
Predominance
to the United
Immigration
States since 1930: A First Look," International Migration Review, 18 (Winter 1984):
908-965.
4. Andrea
and Katherine
Tyree
M.
Donato,
Immigrants to the United States," Sociology
"The
Sex
Composition
and Social Research,
of Legal
69 (July 1985):
577-584.
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Comment:
Hasia
R. Diner
familiar to students of immigration
and ethnic history
Sydney Weinberg,
as the author of The World of Our Mothers,
in
this article to as
attempts
sess the state of the field. Her goal is to show how historians
of immi
gration
history,
oblivious
and ethnicity have failed to respond to the challenge
of women's
to think in static ways,
and in essence how they have continued
to the changes which have swept through the world of historical
of the study of women.
scholarship ushered in by the birth and maturation
the continuing
identifies
and then chides
tendency of ethnic
Weinberg
to universalize
from the male
She lambasts
the
experience.
fact that they persist in blithely assuming
that men's patterns constituted
the important, and often the only, ones in the migration
process. This
inclination
has "distorted
and impoverished"
the scholarly
endeavor.
historians
to
then to call upon her "fellow"
historians
She proceeds
immigration
in richer and
heed the call, join the modern world,
and start thinking
more complex ways.
of
calls to task many of the practitioners
Weinberg
uncompromisingly
the craft
and questions
the basic male-centeredness
of the bulk of the
an orien
That
fundamental
orientation
for
the
scholarship.
scholarship,
tation as old as the study of immigration
itself, has two serious negative
the
First, Weinberg
argues,
leaving out women
ignores
and
of
of
much
the
This
experiences
perceptions
immigrant population.
out on women
is judged here, and in much of contemporary
blanking
on a moral
to be wrong
level. But Weinberg
rhetoric,
argues quite
implications.
that by confusing
persuasively
as a whole,
ence of immigrants
the experience
of men with
the experi
are left
We
has
been
distorted.
history
with not just politically tainted history, but with bad history.
the
From Weinberg's
vantage
point it is indeed ironic that despite
in
and
ethnic
in
the
1970s
the
tremendous
history
growth
immigration
it comes to looking at women
and gender
field has barely changed when
in every other way
historians
have moved
issues. Although
immigration
concerns
the
their
stubborn
refusal
the
of
founding generation,
beyond
on her part
to study women
This assertion
has barely been budged.
the work
than once
of Oscar
she cites more
certainly
explains why
to
The Uprooted
of the 1940s, and indeed by linking Handlin's
?on
sees
The Transplanted
of the 1980s, Weinberg
John Bodnar's
gen
an almost unbroken
line.
der grounds?
Handlin
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55
Forum
Yet
else
immigration-ethnic
history has changed.
historians
After
have, it is asserted here,
day immigration
between
historians
who
class and
"the struggle
ceased
emphasized
... those who believed
are more
culture was more
important." They
everything
all, modern
about
to liberally borrow from sociology
and anthropology,
likely nowadays
use
more
and complex
and they now
sophisticated
analysis of power to
America.
examine
the ethnic enclave and its relationship with mainstream
has been replaced with the
stupefied former peasant of The Uprooted
in
Yet despite such
The
creative resister-adapter
Transplanted.
depicted
remains stuck in the
shifts, the field of immigration
history
paradigm
The
quicksand
What
of male analysis.
then would
constitute
Weinberg?
tions which
into
clearly
women
to Sydney
history
good
according
can glean her scholarly
ideal by examining
the assump
seems
to
this
fall very
First,
essay.
underlay
Weinberg
are convinced
that swathe of feminist
scholars who
that
We
and men
have
dissimilar
that a uniquely
female per
and that under the same
priorities,
from a male
diverges
perspective,
spective
men and women will behave differently. As such women
circumstances,
to react differ
in families and in ethnic groups can a priori be assumed
to
their
kin
situations
from
male
and
ently
compatriots.
Compounding
in which
the world
the immigrants
both that
this divergence,
functioned,
out
in their own communities
and the larger one around them, meted
benefits
and liabilities
ing off with
the validity
content
the lion's
of
those
on the basis of gender, which
share of the first. This situation
studies
on
to comment
cited
here
the behavior
in notes
and
clearly men walk
surely undermines
texts which
feel
and values
of "Italians,"
"Jews,"
women
and
others.
Men
and
in
these
"Poles,"
groups faced disparate
terms.
in gender-specific
worlds
and made sense of their experiences
from
the
notion
that
historians,
proceeds
Secondly, Weinberg
begin
in the 1940s and going
strong into the late
ning with Oscar Handlin
date of this essay), have actually written
about
(the presentation
on
men. When
male income, male employment
patterns,
they present data
ar
to
and
the
male political
like,
according
Weinberg's
participation,
1980s
ticle,
have
historians
its associational,
work,
assumes that we know
about what
probed
and
the maleness
its informal
of
the immigrant world,
its
As such this essay
from the size of the literature,
networks.
a great deal, judging
to be an immigrant man, varying
and time. We have presumably
learned much
it meant
group, place,
forms of coping"
after nearly
a half
century
of scholarly
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obviously
by
about "men's
inquiry.
But,
Journal of American
56
then male
mechanisms
coping
probably
Ethnic History
were
not
/ Summer
1992
with
synonymous
everyone's.
Finally,
plinarity
making
Weinberg
to put
assumes,
enriches
historical
it simplistically,
interdisci
of
scholarship
to questions
to
of gender and more
receptive
voices. Like many contemporary
social historians,
par
taken by the insights
is much
historians, Weinberg
inherently
it more sensitive
hearing women's
ticularly feminist
that
in the direction
to glimpsing
has offered a window
of anthropology.
Anthropology
women
saw themselves.
have
further
examined
Anthropologists
the complex webs
greater sensitivity
a more
and as such have offered
activities
to break
ones
of relationships
within
how
with
any society,
on women's
integrated perspective
then calls upon immigration
historians
but their disciplinary
the gender boundaries
as they seek a denser, more
and to emulate anthropologists
and relationships.
out not only of
as well
She
layered portrait of ethnicity and ethnic life.
to see if it is
to be probed
needs
Each one of these assumptions
to
to
listen
indeed imperative for immigration historians
Sydney Weinberg
the way
do
their
work.
her
and change
essay, or this
they
Certainly
to address adequately
the
is too limited in space or scope
comment,
differentness.
While
the prison camp memoir
cited
issue of male-female
and graphic
reactions ? in
offered both a moving
image of contrasting
this case
too
to adversity ?we
know
tells us boldly,
"Faced with
Weinberg
men
reacted
situation
was
to take
in strikingly
different ways." How
truly similar? Did prison guards
the same? Did women
women
little
a similar
and men
exactly
there children present? Who
labor camp? Were
in the camp push women
did caring for children
it on
face
value.
women
situation,
do we know
treat
the men
and
do the same work
cared
for
and
that the
the
in the
them? How
into certain
behavior
talk about when
did women
they did their embroidery?
patterns? What
men never attempt to add
or
Did
Did they never mention
escape
politics?
not
to
life?
the point, we
of
To
belabor
the
grim reality
prison
beauty
or
a
not
of other situations
know enough
about this,
myriad
just do
to be able to state
and ethnicity
face the scholar of immigration
which
with
conviction
that the circumstances
of men
and women
were
ever
the
same, or that their behavior was actually that different.
from
be my greatest
and this may
point of departure
Secondly,
on
matter
of
and
the
of
the
historiography
immigration
Weinberg
we
over
the
how much do
actually know about men? That is,
ethnicity,
course of a half century of scholarship we may have vast troves of data
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57
Forum
about male
nance
men
male
action, and male gover
jobs, male political
we
but what do
of immigrant churches,
really know about how
sense of these experiences
made
from the point of view of their
income,
We certainly have a plethora of studies about
of masculinity?
associations
of male
the voluntary
but what do we know
immigrants,
men
to the activities
about the meaning
attributed
of their clubs? We
definition
may
at our reach multiple
in the Catholic
studies of male clerics
do we know about, for example, which
boys became
how they became
socialized
into the clergy, what
self-images
have
church,
but what
priests,
male celibate
clergy had.
for example,
to
takes to task Jon Gjerde's From Peasants
Weinberg,
Farmers
for not dealing with how changes
in the family economy
"altered
of women's
roles and status." How did men, whose
roles
perceptions
the shifts
in their lives? Just because men
also changed,
cope with
a rise in status does not mean
that their new roles need not
experienced
Ewa Morawksa's
be examined.
For Bread With Butter
is spotlighted
for
not dealing with
the complex
between
relationships
immigrant women
and
their American-born
and their sons of American
about foreign-born
fathers
daughters. What
birth? What do we know about their modes
that "if immigrant men operated
role their wives
in these
played
also complains
of interaction? Weinberg
we
do not learn what
small businesses,
I
Yet
ask how much
would
enterprises."
actually paid to the phenomenon
the nature of his work patterns.
historians
immigration
attention
have
of the small
Unlike
have barely
ethnic
business
immigrant
Iwould
Weinberg,
begun
to deal with
historians
man
and
contend
"men's
that
forms
of
coping."
The issue
is not just that immigration
have been oblivious
historians
to the female context of family and community,
but they have by and
that in fact we
about gender, which means
large failed to ask questions
as well. And,
there has not
know little about "manliness"
importantly,
a
to
two
effort
these
kinds
of
world views
yet emerged
systematic
bring
and under
circumstances
they harmonized
together to see under which
which
they conflicted.
like so many other historians
these days, Weinberg
looks to
Finally,
own
as
to
of
the
her
the
antidote
pro
potential
problems
anthropology
fession.
is not an unmitigated
partisan of the anthropologie
indicate that its insights might be the bridge which
over to a richer, deeper,
historians
and more
immigration
While
she
she does
perspective,
will
bring
nuanced
analysis.
But
anthropologists
are not historians.
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They,
in the
Journal of American
58
main,
change
/ Summer
1992
They rarely deal with the central
that
and explaining
is, pinpointing
scholarship,
time. While
indicate that what they are
good ethnographers
ask different
objective
Ethnic History
of questions.
kinds
of historical
over
observing may not have always been, they are not focused on charting
on the
the passage of time and probing
the forces of change. Historians,
are
most
not
with
for
the
deal
who
other hand,
part
living, and
people
cannot answer questions
of experience.
about the meaning
therefore
Meaning
to be
has
teased
out
static
of
documents.
Furthermore
the
it pos
anthropological
present-day
a
on
to
moment
in
time and strip away the
focus
sible for the researcher
a
to
The objective
of
attributed
of
various
layers
meaning
phenomenon.
the historian even if dealing with a single time and place is to locate that
orientation
of much
research makes
in a spectrum of what came before and what followed. That is a
can help but only a bit.
task for which another discipline
complex
to
historians
pay attention to anthropology,
Certainly
immigration
ought
moment
as well
as other
have
traditions. Their peers in other specialties
scholarly
research. But Weinberg
derived a great deal from reading ethnographic
overstates
that "History had to become more
the case by contending
of
before it could expand" across its narrow definition
interdisciplinary
not
to
first
roles.
After
hers
is
the
coterie
of
historians
women's
all,
to offer the historian. Oscar
had much
that other disciplines
discover
Handlin
was
demonstrated
indebted to the Chicago
School of Sociology
deeply
the striking influence of W.I. Thomas,
Robert Park,
to "The Treatment
Yet according
Robert Redfield.
anthropologist
his work
Women,"
and
and
of
as the apogee of male-centered
immigration
are all fine and good,
the insights of other disciplines
stands
Thus,
scholarship.
but are not prerequisite
Like any scholarly
for "better"
scholarship.
endeavor,
immigration/ethnic
history awaits new
of
ideas, new insights, and new "truths" to clear up the misconceptions
on
men
and
focused
the
the past. Long dominated
by
long
large-scale
of migration
implications
to women
and
attention
history paid little
immigration
in available
Limited
sources,
burdened
doubly
by asking ques
and adaptation,
their concerns.
these historians
shied away from being
tions that did not show up in obvious government
records, organizational
of
the
the
and
and
archives,
great
near-great
exceptions
personal papers
of
to the working
of those who made up the majority
class anonymity
to
It was hardly surprising
that they hesitated
enclaves.
the immigrant
tackle
social
even more
networks,
hidden
issues
and the mentalit?
of
internal
of women
family dynamics,
and men.
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informal
Forum
59
is absolutely
She
Weinberg
right to call for new forms of scholarship.
is indeed on target when
she holds up Leonore Davidoff
and Catherine
as a model
to emulate. The fact that in a single,
Hall's Family Fortunes
of
middle-class
Victorian
interrelated
and Hall
families, Davidoff
study
cannot
demonstrated
that public/private,
be seen
work/home
male/female,
as
as separate polarities,
but rather they functioned
highly
integrated
entities,
neither of which
can be understood
without
equal
reference
to the
other.
As
such
the Davidoff
and Hall
indicates
approach of complementarity
not
should be calling for here is
that what Weinberg
just that immigration
women
should deal more
with
and ethnic historians
thoroughly
(which
but that they should
search for the constant,
they should),
dynamic
between men and women within
intersections
the ethnic communities.
That in turn calls for close work on men ? as men ? as well as a continu
ation of the already
Ethnic historians
to study women.
firmly established
imperative
have to be all sorts of historians.
They must
entire communities
in order
study
to be fully
for any one part of their analysis
the insights of labor history,
They must master and consider
developed.
to name but a few of
urban
history, political
history,
religious history,
to
need
assimilate.
What
demands
is that
the specialties
they
Weinberg
among
women's
homework.
cated
hats, they also cannot avoid putting on that of the
as well. To date she tells us, they have not done their
Iwould maintain
that the assignment
is even more compli
their many
historian
that it seems
at first.
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Maxine
Comment:
In her clear
tion
and well
to the fact
Schwartz
Seller
documented
calls atten
article, Sydney Weinberg
of major
have not
surveys
immigration
on
women
in their work.
She is
scholarship
that authors
incorporated
adequately
correct. Immigration
historians
are not alone
In the past
in this neglect.
has
in many
scholarship
appeared
as
as an
well
literature, philosophy,
psychology,
sociology
In these areas, as in immigration
and history.
the
thropology
history,
new knowledge
or treated as unim
has often been ignored, ghettoized
a rich new
few
decades
?
disciplines
traditional
portant,
leaving
A
unchanged.1
exploration
the cultural
of the social
full
male-based
discussion
of
frameworks
disciplinary
the reasons for this would
largely
involve
not only into stereotypical
views about women,
but also into
"backlash" of the late 1970s and 1980s and into the politics
construction
here. What
discussion
on women
surveys
of
the new
social
artifacts
as well
will not undertake
this broader
of knowledge.21
as
to
how authors of
do is offer suggestions
or
volumes
about a
surveys
history
(general
Iwill
immigration
so aptly defined.
single group) can correct the problem Weinberg
in recent surveys of immigration
The neglect of women
history is not
or mate
of appropriate
research methodologies
due to the unavailability
are ?or
?familiar
historians
should
be
with
rials. Immigration
certainly
history of the 1960s and its use of oral history, folklore,
as census
data to recover
the
and other quantitative
can
class. These methods
and the working
history of women, minorities
the history of immigrant women
be used to reclaim
and, indeed, they
and as documented
have been. As Weinberg's
paper amply illustrates,
Cordasco
and, more recently and com
by Francesco
by bibliographies
an
extensive
literature on
Donna
Gabaccia,
multidisciplinary
pletely,
women
in the form of journal articles
already exists
of surveys (and other works on immigration)
Authors
monographs.3
as a reason for excluding women.
no longer plead lack of materials
immigrant
and
can
of
also exists as to how the growing wealth
can be integrated
into immigration
histories.
Gerda Lerner, one of the earliest and most important theorists of women's
can include women
in one of three ways ?
history, noted that historians
"contributions"
history, or a newly concep
history, "woman-centered"
A
theoretical
information
tualized
framework
about women
gender-integrated
history.
In so-called
contributions
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history,
the
Forum
61
adds women
to the text by examining
their contributions
in the
as
econom
and
of
such
categories
investigation
politics
of
In women-centered
the historian
adds new categories
history,
historian
traditional male
ics.
and self-defi
distinctive
that reflect women's
experiences
investigation
as
domestic
childbirth
and
such
work,
nitions,
childrearing,
family,
how
crafts and arts, and women's
women's
Ultimately,
organizations.
a
new
to Lerner
ever, according
(and others), historians must develop
even
new interpretations,
and perhaps
synthesis with new categories,
of both women
new chronological
based on the experiences
frameworks
and men.4 Lerner arranges these three ways of doing women's
history
hierarchically,
with
grated history
the enterprise
the highest.
and the new, inte
at this stage of
that
argue, however,
all
three
need
do
historians
simultaneously.5
contributions
history
the lowest
I would
immigration
of women's
in high repute among many
practitioners
Though
?
women
who have
in
the
contributions
missing
filling
history
history,
?
a
in
first
is
to
"male"
activities
contributed
necessary
step
integrating
distinctive
women
into immigration history surveys. Despite
gender roles,
those of
lives have always been intertwined with
immigrant women's
same
im
affected
have
men.
forces
historical
the
Moreover,
immigrant
? the
of
as
women
their male counterparts
geographic
opening
migrant
wars ?though
and intellectual
urbanization,
industrialization,
frontiers,
not
often
in different
the task of gender
"invisible" women
historians of immigration must begin
ways. Therefore,
a conscious
effort to reveal the
inclusion by making
in their accustomed
categories.
the inclusion
of women who were
history begins
as physician
women
and
such
male
in
arenas,
traditionally
outstanding
Harris
leaders
labor
and
Zakrzewska
Marie
educator
medical
Mary
with
Contributions
and Rose Schneiderman.6
Filiopietistic
(Mother) Jones, Mary Anderson,
lists
of notable
to ethnic vanity by cataloging
that catered
works
long
a
as scholarship,
and rightly so. However,
men are no longer acceptable
while
that
most
reveals
ethnic
histories
of
indices
quick reading of the
men active in politics,
and other areas are often named,
labor, education,
are not.
their less numerous but nonetheless
present female counterparts
of women
in traditional
prominent
that "no
the
impression
history
immigration
categories
new
will
it
women
did not exist. Equally
table"
provide
important,
new questions
about the origins, goals, and styles
insights and suggest
ethnic communities.7
of leadership within
of
the inclusion
Of course contributions
history must move
beyond
Including
the names
of
and careers
will
correct
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Journal of American
62
to uncover
"notable" women
in the traditional
who write
about
/ Summer
1992
and roles of ordinary women
history. Thus the historians
immigration
of immigrants must include the motiva
the activities
of
categories
the motivations
as well
tions of women
Ethnic History
as men. Women
outnumbered
among Irish
percent of Jewish
43.4
century, comprised
mass
movement
at the turn of the
the
male
heavily
during
immigration
were
in
the
all
and
the
of
post World War
century,
majority
immigrants
immi
the motives
of women
II years.8 The historian must not assume
immigrants
of the nineteenth
men
the same as those of men. To what extent did "female"
grants were
sex discrimination
in employment,
such as sexual harassment,
motives
or dissatisfaction
in the homeland
with
their roles as women
impel
to emigrate? Did married women
their
follow
passively
single women
as many
texts seem to imply, or did wives play an
to America,
husbands
even an initiating, role in a family's
to emi
decision
active, sometimes
grate?
In pursuing
women
note
contributions
in virtually
its differences
history,
traditional
historians
must
look for the role of
in immigration
category
history and
as similarities
between
the sexes. Discus
every
as well
for example,
should note that men were more
sions of Americanization,
women
were more
to
while
attend
likely to frequent
night school,
likely
domestic
settlement
houses, and should include the immigrant woman's
role in teaching
of
Discussions
her husband
and children
children
immigrant
in attendance,
girls' experiences
and other matters often differed
middle-class
in the schools
American
ways.
should
that
recognize
courses
attitude
toward
taken,
teachers,
recent
from that of boys. Paula Fass's
in extracurricu
In states, for example,
that participation
history Outside
Italian girls were more
lar activities differed by sex as well as ethnicity;
in academic
clubs and honor societies
than Italian
likely to participate
boys.9
while
Similarly,
historians
immigrant
men were
ards,
immigrant
women
writing
about
nativism
should
discern
that
as radicals, criminals,
or drunk
stereotyped
or as
were
as
immoral
sexually
stereotyped
and mothers who held their families back
ignorant, "dirty" homemakers
10
from becoming Americanized
is a first step. Historians
who
history
Important as it is, contributions
must
want
to integrate women
into immigration
also
surveys
history
in
with
the
non-traditional
familiarize
themselves
research
new,
catego
ries of "women-centered"
in women's
and specialists
women
have characteristically
As Weinberg
notes, anthropologists
to the places
have
called
attention
history
been found ?the
the
home,
neighborhood,
history.
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Forum
63
cultural
clubs and women's
women's
sisterhoods,
societies,
to men's
have
also
called
attention to the
organizations.
They
have characteristically
done, such as caring for house
things women
in
holds and children,
"women's
work"
outside
the house,
engaging
religious
auxiliaries
kinship and friendship networks,
maintaining
supporting ethnic churches
and charities,
and preserving
ethnic cultures. Jane Addams,
Sophonisba
Era women
and other Progressive
Grace and Edith Abbott
Breckinridge,
information on many women-centered
subjects, as do the recent
provide
of immigration must become
cited by Weinberg.
Historians
researchers
familiar with these sources.11
must
the important women-centered
topics of
women's
construction
of
and
sexuality,
gender. De
fertility,
some
women
to
the
reluctance
of
talk
about
sexuality, memoirs,
spite
Historians
also address
women's
oral histories,
and cross-generational
studies provide insight into women's
sex education
contraception,
(or lack of it), marriage,
about immi
and
Grace Abbott wrote
abortion.12
childbirth,
with
experiences
pregnancy,
grant midwives
in 1915 and Michael
Harris's
1920 study Immigrant
on immigrant birth rates
the Community
contains material
recent history of birth control
and maternity
customs.13 Linda Gordon's
to immi
choices available
contains data not only about the reproductive
and
Health
attitudes
but also about "mainstream"
grant women,
(usually
fearful)
women
were
into
what
told
toward immigrant women's
fertility.14 Insight
those
about their proper gender roles and how they actually understood
can be culled from ethnic litera
roles both before and after immigration
ture and
phies.15
Authors
make
the ethnic
rian who
as from memoirs,
letters,
and biogra
not only to
surveys can begin
immediately
immigration
of immigration
in the traditional categories
visible
history
to
The
histo
to add "women-centered"
their
inquiry.
categories
of
adds
as the
life (at the parish as well
religious
lit
and
nationalist
cultural
societies,
activities,
and writes
traditional
and the arts to more
categories
will have created a
and men's
roles in all categories
family
charitable
pulpit level),
erature, theater
about women's
The
as well
women
but also
more
press
authentic
historian
life,
of the immigrant experience.
third stage, a new, gender
toward Lerner's
new
but also to
to
not
add
need
categories,
only
account
who moves
will
synthesis,
the experience
of
to take into account
traditional
redefine
categories
in poli
of immigrants
discussions
and men. For example,
both women
in
on the roles of Irish and other men
focused
tics have traditionally
fair
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64
Journal
of American
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
the vote
voting patterns. Lacking
exercised
in
different
1920, immigrant
power
political
on different
issues. Definitions
of "politics" must
arenas, concentrating
roles in promoting
be enlarged to include, for example, Finnish women's
urban
political
machines
and ethnic
women
before
roles in
through theaters and youth camps, Jewish women's
reform
to
in
and
the role
elitist
school
New
York
resist
City,
organizing
in disseminating
birth
and other immigrant women
of Emma Goldman
socialism
and opposing World War I.16
information
A gender integrated history must not only redefine traditional catego
of both sexes, itmust also look at the
ries in the light of the experiences
women
men
within
these categories.
For ex
and
interaction between
control
in a gender-integrated
of social mobility
history should
ample, discussions
from blue collar to white
collar and professional
include men moving
women moving
from factory and domestic work to clerical
occupations,
of
and teaching jobs, and the impact on each sex of the social mobility
roles in supporting male mobil
encompass women's
or
the family's
social life and
male
education
directing
ity by financing
as a means of mobility
and men.
for both women
the marriage
the other.
It should
toward a gender-integrated
the historian working
synthesis
Finally,
roles in supposedly male areas
must pay attention not only to women's
areas. As Weinberg's
female
roles in supposedly
but also to men's
of families and were
article notes, men as well as women were members
affected by family life or by the lack of family life.What impact did a
and children have
relationship with his parents or with his wife
on his decision
to the United
to emigrate
and his adjustment
States?
were
in
How
did
Ameri
roles
about
size?
men's
decisions
What
family
man's
can life change the immigrant man's
and of himself as a man?
As
historians
immigration
who
image of appropriate
may
not be well
male
versed
behavior
in the new
move
toward "gender fair" histories,
they should be
history
and interpretation. As Weinberg's
to problems
in documentation
in areas such as labor force
statistics
article points out, male oriented
of women.
There are also
the
activities
participation may underrepresent
women's
alert
about immigrant women
in interpretation. The historian writing
the dis
to strike a balance between
stressing "victimization,"
women
in the family and in the ethnic and
encountered
crimination
problems
will need
larger communities,
ling and improving
and "agency,"
their lives.17
women's
achievements
in control
the mistake
historians must also guard against
(which
Immigration
in
of letting the
women's
studies
the
scholars
of
many
made)
early
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Forum
65
commonalities
In writing
sensitive
of gender
about women
to differences
the many differences
among women.
in writing
about men,
historians must be
obscure
as
not only
in ethnicity,
but also in social class,
of
religion, political
background,
region
origin and settlement,
family
and
These
variables
status,
intersect, and their impact on women
disability.
have been more
may vary from their effect on men. Some variables
for women
than for men; marriage,
and middle
parenthood,
a
on
on the
had
women's
lives.
age usually
greater impact
Disability,
more
men
other hand, may have been considered
than for
important for
was considered
for whom dependency
normal.18
women,
important
However
historians
Weinberg
immigration history
least three reasons.
will
choose
has called
to approach
that Sydney
it, the problem
women
treatment
the
of
in
to,
inadequate
so
needs immediate attention.
It does
for at
surveys,
First and most
important, gender-inclusive
history
valid.
richer, more nuanced, more
intellectually
once
a
is
controversial
An
under
immigration
again
topic.
of women's
roles in past immigration may help produce poli
be better
Secondly,
attention
history,
standing
cies for admission,
and training of today's immigrants
that
resettlement,
are fair to both women
reasons
and men. Finally,
there are educational
for working
toward "gender fair" immigrant history. In New York, Cali
fornia, and other
more
"inclusive"
reformers have begun
states, educational
multi-ethnic
for the schools
curriculum
a
to develop
and higher
and are turning to ethnic histories for relevant scholarship.19
It
be ironic, and tragic, if materials
to promote
introduced
ethnic
education
would
inclusiveness
the same
among
young
people
were
to promote
gender
exclusion
at
time.
NOTES
1. Ellen DuBois et al., Feminist Scholarship: Kindling in the Groves of Aca
deme (Champaign, 111., 1985) p. 181. For other perspectives on the impact of
feminist studies, see Elizabeth Langland andWalter Gove, eds. A Feminist Perspec
tive in theAcademy: theDifference ItMakes (Chicago, 1983).
2.
For
an
introduction
to the considerable
literature
on
the social
construction
of
knowledge, see Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, 2d ed. (New York; 1990)
and Michael Apple and Lois Weis, eds., Ideology and Practice in Schooling (Phila
delphia, 1983).
3.
Francesco
Cordasco,
The
Immigrant
Woman
inNorth
America:
An Annotated
Bibliography of Selected References (Metuchen, N.J., 1985); Donna Gabaccia, Im
migrant Women in the United States: A Selectively Annotated Multidisciplinary
Bibliography (New York andWestport, Conn., 1990).
4.
For
a fuller
account
of
Lerner's
thinking
on women's
history,
see
Gerda
Lerner, TheMajority Finds Its Past: Placing Women inHistory (New York, 1979).
5. As Weinberg notes in footnote 55, my survey To Seek America: A History of
This content downloaded from 152.3.43.208 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:55:39 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
66
Journal of American
Ethnic History
/ Summer
1992
Ethnie Life in the United States (Englewood, N.J., 1977), does give sustained atten
tion towomen's roles. This survey history and my edited volume Immigrant Women
(Philadelphia, 1981) deal with women in terms of both "contributions" and "women
centered" history and deal with family and communal and organizational life as
well as politics and work.
6.
For
information
about
see Marie
these women,
A Women's
Zakrzewska,
Quest:
The Life ofMarie Zakrzewska, M.D., ed. Agnes C. Vietor (New York, 1924); Mary
Harris Jones, Autobiography of Mother Jones, 3d ed., rev. (Chicago, 1977); Mary
Anderson, Woman at Work: The Autobiography ofMary Anderson as told toMary
N. Winslow (Minneapolis, 1951); and Rose Schneiderman with Lucy Goldthwaite,
All for One (New York, 1967).
7. Little has been written about leadership in ethnic communities. Perhaps the
best known collection of materials on the subject, John Higham, ed., Ethnic Leader
ship inAmerica (Baltimore, 1978), does not deal with women as leaders.
in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the
8. Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughters
Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983); Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers (New
York, 1976), p. 58; Walter Wilcox, International Migration Statistics (New York,
1969), p. 403.
9. Paula S. Fass, Outside In: Minorities and the Transformation of American
Education (New York, 1989), ch. 3 '"Americanizing' the High Schools," pp. 73
111.
10. See, for example Second Annual Report of the Commission of Immigration
and Housing of California (Sacramento, Calif., 1916), p. 139; Peter Roberts, The New
Immigration: A Study of the Industrial and Social Life of Southern and Eastern
Europeans in America (New York, 1912); and Lester K. Ade, Home Classes for
Foreign Born Mothers, (Harrisburg, Pa.; Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Depart
ment of Instruction Bulletin 295). For a general discussion of stereotypes of immigrant
women,
their
especially
impact
on women's
see Maxine
education,
"The
Seller,
Education of Immigrant Women 1900-1935," Journal of Urban History, 4:3 (May
1978): 307-330.
11. See, for example, Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York,
1902) and Twenty Years at Hull House,
(New York, 1910); Sophonisba P.
New
Homes
Old
York,
for
Breckinridge,
(New
1921); and Grace Abbott, The Immi
grant and the Community (New York, 1921).
12. Examples of such studies are Paul R. Abramson and John Imai Marquez,
"The
Japanese-Americans:
A
Cross-Cultural,
Cross-Sectional
Study
of
Sex
Guilt,"
Journal of Research in Personality, 16 (June 1982): 227-237; Corinne A. Krause,
Grandmothers, Mothers, and Daughters; An Oral History Study of Ethnicity, Men
tal Health, and Continuity of Three Generations of Jewish, Italian, and Slavic
American Women (New York, 1978); and Neil M. Cowan and Ruth Schwartz Cowan,
Our Parents Lives (New York, 1989). Among the many memoirs with relevant
information
are:
Sydelle
Kramer
and
Jenny
Masur,
eds.,
Jewish
Grandmothers
(Boston, 1976) and Kate Simon, Bronx Primitive (New York, 1982) and A Wider
World (New York, 1986).
13. Grace Abbott, "The Midwife in Chicago," American Journal of Sociology,
20 (March 1915): 685-699 and Michael M. Davis, Immigrant Health and the Com
munity (New York, 1920).
14.
(1977;
15.
Linda
Woman's
Woman's
Gordon,
Body,
ed., New York,
1990).
for example,
Charlotte
Paula
See,
Baum,
Right:
Birth
Control
in America
rev.
Hyman,
and
Sony
This content downloaded from 152.3.43.208 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:55:39 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
a Michel's
in
67
Forum
sightful description of the impact of Americanization on Jewish women's roles and
self-concept in The Jewish Woman inAmerica (New York, 1976).
in the North American Labour Move
16. Ritta Stjanstedt, "Finnish Women
ment," inFinnish Diaspora II: The United States, ed. Michael G. Kami (Toronto,
1981); Ronald D. Cohen and Raymond A. Mohl, The Paradox of Progressive Edu
cation: The Gary Plan and Urban Schooling (PortWashington, N.Y., 1977) pp. 50
66; Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 569-572, 597
603.
17. A similar problem in the weighting of "victimization" and "agency" exists
within immigration history as a whole. Does the historian stress hardships or coping
mechanisms? It is hoped the historian stresses both.
18. In public schools at the turn of the century immigrant children were often
singled out for "special education." Girls were less likely than boys to be so identified
and to be given special help. See Jay Chambers andWilliam Hartman, Special Edu
cation Policies: Their History, Implementation, and Finance (Philadelphia, 1983). See
also E. Anne Morrison, "Contradictions in Training 'Exceptional' Children along
Vocational Lines: Milwaukee
1908-1919," Paper presented at annual meeting of
theAmerican Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1985.
19. See Thomas Sobol, Commissioner of Education, "A Curriculum of Inclu
of the State of New York, 22
sion," Albany: State Education Department/University
February 1990.
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Sydney Stahl Weinberg
Response:
must
is loud and clear. Historians
rethink the ways
The message
they
to write histories
if they wish
that give a truly bal
deal with women
Donna Gabaccia,
Hasia Diner
anced view of the immigration
experience.
on my article, note additional
in their commentaries
and Maxine
Seller,
suggest
of both
are treated in immigration
and
history,
of
the
of
ways
experiences
conceptualizing
immigrants
to give us a better understanding
of how they made sense
in the way
problems
women
different
sexes
of their lives.
that one cannot take for granted,
emphasizes
historians
that
the same
do,
immigration
gender roles remained
out
that often
the old country
She points
ideas of
immigration.
For example,
Gabaccia
as many
after
appropriate
crossing.
1917,
scribed
behavior
for men
and women
It is too bad that we must
did
not
the ocean
survive
early as
David
Abraham
de
Cahan
of
Levinsky,
his fate because his wife, who had supported
of this. As
still be reminded
The Rise
in his classic
a man bemoaning
now insisted that he go
in the old country while he "read Talmud,"
a man must
as she told him, "In America,
out and peddle because,
men's
wife."
in
differences
lives after immigration
support his
Although
him
have
been
amply
documented
Bodnar,
immigration
and major alterations
historians
in women's
in recent
must
also
roles
years,
most
seriously
that affected
notably
by John
the subtle
question
familial relations.
is not enough. All three commenta
Yet simply documenting
changes
tors imply that what is lacking, in the histories of men as well as women,
to the
of different
is the meaning
aspects of the immigrant experience
on
women
for
research
it.
simply
living
They go beyond calling
people
to learn more
about
leading
niques
how immigrant
to a better
their
men
lives
sense
that tech
alone; instead, they suggest
lives will also help explain
of women's
their universe
and give us a more com
perceived
picture of the immigrant world view in general.
prehensive
All three commentators
suggest a multifaceted
similarly
Gabaccia
the study of immigrant women.
conceptualizing
number
graphs
tion of
essay.
of possible ways
on women
of one
to undertake
this study, ranging
group to a cross-cultural
to
approach
a
outlines
from mono
investiga
immigrant
in my
to the integrative
I outlined
strategy
diversity,
a
new
seems
to
round
of
the
need
for
She also
family and
suggest
female
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69
Forum
more perceptively
and thus pre
studies to include women
Community
of the immigration
pare the way for a multi-cultural
experi
synthesis
ence. Ultimately,
she believes
that the study of immigrant women will
with
the con
take place on different
fronts simultaneously,
probably
comitant
effect
of communication
across
disciplinary
lines
remaining
a
problem.
Diner
lives, but
points out that not only are we ignorant of women's
sense of their experi
lack understanding
of how men made
ences. We know a great deal about what men did, she asserts, but we have
we
also
yet to learn how they felt. Not only have immigration historians neglected
but because of their failure
the female context of family and community,
we
not to
to ask questions
about gender,
know little about "manliness,"
what people did does not automati
Knowing
to
how
their lives, and until we
they perceived
cally give
sexes
?our
sense of immigrant
both
achieve
this understanding?with
like to see emerge
is a better
history will be limited. What Diner would
mention
"womanliness."
us access
sense
within
of "the constant, dynamic
the ethnic communities."
Seller
for a synthesis based upon
achieve
this objective,
however,
also calls
and men.
To
ans must
first fill
document
while
intersections
between
men
the experiences
she believes
in the gaps in the treatment of women.
in traditional male
of females
the contributions
others
concentrate
on a women-centered
and women
of women
that histori
Some
must
categories,
that reflect dis
history
Only then can we proceed
that
roles and a synthesis
in home and neighborhood.
experiences
a greater understanding
of women's
the interaction of both sexes in a gender-integrated
demonstrates
history.
so
has
become
because
it
is
history
precisely
immigration
Perhaps
tinctive
toward
more
in recent years in dealing with class and cul
sophisticated
that we can fault it for failing to deal in an equally
tural transformations
manner with women.
of which
they
paradigm
Regardless
sophisticated
much
to
to follow, modern
historians must
add gender
immigration
that results from leaving
of analysis or risk the distortion
their categories
an important dimension
of the immigration
unexplored.
experienced
choose
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