Gender In World History Part 1 Summary

In his book Gender in World History, Peter N Stearns articulates how patriarchy was established, how cultural contacts changed it, how that system impacted women then and what that means for women today. This is shown by Western Europe’s gender roles and religion as well as their impacts on Native Americans and the Middle East. In Western Europe, patriarchy is already established because of Christianity and Catholicism. Thus when they went to places like America and the Middle East they brought those beliefs and their patriarchy. In the introduction to Part Two Stearns illustrates this by writing, “Europeans had very decided views about what was right and what was wrong where gender was concerned, and they were not shy about judging others or insisting on change (Stearns 57).” They were going around trying to westernize places like America and the Middle East that weren’t wrong in their ways and those places weren’t always accepting of Western Europe’s insistence on reform, for example the Cherokee Tribe in America during European expansion (1500—1900). They had a matriarchy, but this was all wrong to the Europeans and completely against God to the Europeans. It was the way that women were the heads of families, and had …show more content…
He clearly lays out time periods in his book and writes about them in order. He writes about the start of patriarchy and how it became worldwide, then he goes on to explain the meaning of that patriarchal society for women in later years and finally how women today are still affected by the patriarchy that was so deeply believed in in the early stages of colonization and